


Venus Envy

by fartherfaster



Series: Botanical Diaries [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood and Gore, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, Gratuitous References to Pop Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:30:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fartherfaster/pseuds/fartherfaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’re you looking at?” she asks.</p><p>“Looking at you,” says Steve.<br/>-<br/>Darcy navigates the fallout of SHIELD's collapse.<br/>-<br/><b>sevenfoxes</b> wanted a sequel to The Neighbour as told by Christopher the Office Cactus. She got this instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Venus Envy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenfoxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/gifts).



> The prequel, sequel, and in-between-quel to The Neighbour. For **sevenfoxes** , for cheerleading and handholding and a case of the season’s shriekings.
> 
> Please heed the blood and gore tag, readers. There was also a lot more kissing than I anticipated. Who am I kidding. I thought this would be less than 5k of nonsense. I have no idea what happened and I regret everything, including the cactus. Especially the cactus.

 

_It wasn’t too long before I showed up at your door,_

_I’d been gone a thousand miles._

_I didn’t know how much more I could stand, if I could stand at all._

_You said I looked like I’d been through World War II_

_and my soul was worn right through._

     -  Brandi Carlile, _What Did I Ever Come Here For_

* * *

 

New York is a drastic change from New Mexico, and Darcy doesn’t need Siri to point out those differences. She gets a full face of cold, burnt-smelling rain as soon as she steps out of the airport. It sinks into her thin jacket and mats down her hair as she does her best to move up the line and get into a taxi.

“Ms Lewis.”

Will Smith circa MiB is standing at the curb two car-lengths away. Not Will Smith, of course, but a tall and somewhat lanky young black man with the suit, shades, earpiece, and one hell of a resting bitch face. He tips his chin towards the midsize behind him. Darcy sighs.

“Time to run away and join the circus?”

He reaches out and takes her bag, slinging it gently into the trunk before he opens the passenger door for her. She catches the tremor of a muscle near his mouth that’s keeping him from smiling.

“Something like that,” he says. “The glove compartment has some further documents for you.” He settles behind the wheel and steers the vehicle smoothly into traffic, only to brake after a few dozen yards.

“Should I not touch the big red button?”

The muscle in his jaw ticks again, and Darcy has to fight the compulsion to grab her phone. “You should not touch the big red button, no. You must, however, always be aware of its placement.”

“Gotcha.”

They roll another block, and then they’re free and clear of the Grand Central Parkway and headed toward the Midtown Tunnel. “What’s your name?” Darcy asks, while they’re waiting at the tolls.

The agent finally takes off his sunglasses and folds them discreetly into his inside pocket. “You can call me Agent Seven,” he says.

Darcy’s sorely tempted to ask if he’s shitting her. She settles instead for, “Okay. But then you totally have to call me Moneypenny after I’m initiated.”

The smile stretches a little over his face. “There’s no initiation, Ms Lewis.”

“Moneypenny.”

“You’ll do a course about SOPs and document protocols and then various levels of field evaluations, depending on how high the Deputy-Director wants your clearance.” They roll through the tolls without pausing, and Darcy tries not to be surprised.

“I know people,” she says, “but I don’t think I’m allowed to know what they know.” She annotates her contract and the other documents in the folder. One in particular has the heading _In Case of Alien Biological Agents_ and she mutters, “You are fucking kidding me.”

Agent Seven smiles at her. “That’s the spirit, Moneypenny.”

-

The first days pass in blurs of paperwork. There are forms for everything, and really, Darcy gets the message, she is never allowed to tell anyone anything ever again. There’s even a debriefing packet about lying to her family. She won’t need it, but still. It’s the thought that counts, and it’s the thought that’s terrifying. Finally, someone decides that she’ll do much better if she’s allowed to read and sign her documents in the office that’s been requisitioned just for her, and she prays that it’s got a window.

It does, and it’s got some other more interesting features to boot. A corner-designed desk fills most of its space, with two gaping, empty bookshelves and a pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs in front of the desk. There’s a tall leather chair on wheels behind the desk, and tidy, wide-panelled slat-style binds over the long window. The office is easily fifty percent larger and better stocked than she expected.

“Huh,” she manages, setting her purse and laptop bag on the desk. “This is something else, alright,” she tells Agent Seven.

He smiles at her, and in the last day it’s nearly made it all the way to his eyes. Darcy figures she’ll have cracked him by the end of the week.

“You’re an investment, Ms Lewis,” he tells her. “The Deputy-Director has seen your name linked with too many others, and she-”

“Wanted me for the benefit of the Empire?”

Agent Seven doesn’t stutter, but it’s close. “Yes,” he agrees easily.

“Can do,” she says. “Now, is there a supply closet I can pillage?”

He jerks his head leftward. “This way,” he says, holding out a hand, “and you should have your keys.”

There’s a physical key, a swipe key, and a translucent card with a cartoon fingerprint on one edge and the SHIELD emblem on the other. She presses her thumb to the image, and a series of codes flash in blue, superimposed on the eagle.

“It’ll provide an alternating code for doors that have multiple system checks,” her babysitter says. He takes it from her hand and presses his own thumb over the symbol, and the whole body of the card shines in a pinkish hue. “I don’t match your biometrics, so it won’t acknowledge me,” he explains. He swivels the card around. “Use it upside-down to register a threat; it’ll prompt a backup code at the door. Enter that code correctly and the system will be on alert and will ping your SO; enter it incorrectly and the system goes into discrete shutdown, meaning you’ll get into that door, but everything else in the vicinity will be locked down. It’ll be enough time to get a team to your location if there’s ever an intrusion risk.”

“You mean if I’m held at gunpoint,” Darcy says blandly. They’ve made it to the storage closet, and she’s debating on purple post-its over the classic yellow.

“Yes,” says Agent Seven.

“Right,” says Darcy, sighing, and taking as many highlighters as she can hold. “Will you grab me a stapler?”

Now that she’s got a place to put them, Seven says he’s going to pick up the manuals and binders she needs to read and initial. He explains that everything she’s signed so far simply allows her to exist inside the building and the apartment they’re providing. There’s more, apparently, if she wants to do anything more useful than breathe. He leaves her to her selections, making a poignant case for red-toned Sharpies before he turns away.

Darcy makes it back to her office with an armload of supplies, and she’s grateful she only put the electronic lock on now that she’s so encumbered. She is immediately less glad when she realises someone has been in her office in the four minutes she’s been absent.

There’s a plant on the middle of the desk, a piece of paper sticking out from under its pot. It’s a dour-looking little cactus with the very beginnings of a blossom on top, the bud still tightly closed. Its spines give off the appearance of silver-white fur, but she knows better than to touch. She also recognises the handwriting.

_This isnt the desert or the circus_

_Youll do OK_

_PS the purple stickies are MINE_

It’s the same as one of those jackboots that had manhandled Jane’s belongings - she’d accidentally run into him in Puente Antiguo’s only bar, and he’d scratched a room number and _Clint_ as if it was his real name, saying “What do you say we get us outta here?” in a rumbled whisper. She’d been sorely tempted then, but the absolute absence of expression on his face earlier that afternoon was still making her nervous; it was too easy to see how constructed his casual aura was against that contrast.

“You’re the best catch in the barrel,” she’d told him then, “but I’m not fishing.”

 _Clint_ , she remembers, gave her a sideways sort of smirk and nodded with good nature, finishing his beer and standing. He’d caught the bartender’s eye as he opened his wallet, and then had asked her, “Having anything else?”

Darcy had shaken her head, and he’d passed over a few folded bills, saying, “She’s on me,” before nodding at her once more and heading back out into the desert night.

Seven comes into the office, loaded down with binders, while she’s still staring into middle distance.

“Huh,” he says, looking at the cactus. “Housewarming?”

“Yeah,” she says, “not appreciated.”

“No?”

“Do you know an agent with a mashed nose and blond hair? Maybe uses the alias ‘Clint’?”

Seven almost laughs and clears his throat to prevent it from getting away from him. “Ah,” he says, “Clint’s his real name.” And then asks, “How do you know it’s him?”

“Handwriting,” she mutters. “How did he get in? And does he know it’s creep-tastic?”

“Hawkeye is our resident ventilation problem,” Seven says, putting the binders down in a heap. “He also hero-worships competent women. I think he just wants you to notice him.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Darcy asks, outraged. “We’re starting with the sexual harassment binder.”

“Uh,” says Seven, and then he amends, “yeah, yeah, that’s smart.”

The plant gets moved to the corner of the desk as Darcy and Seven take their seats.

-

On her third day in the office, Darcy throws her purse into her chair, hangs her coat on the hatstand, and starts shelving books. Some are policy binders, some are conduct guides, and one behemoth is a first aid manual that comes with its own red knapsack. That takes up much of the bottom shelf, the space beside it reserved for Darcy’s workout sneakers and a pair of comfortable flats. Then she roots through her purse, pulls out an athletic water bottle, and unceremoniously squirts nearly half of its contents into his pot.

“You looked thirsty,” she says aloud. “Can a cactus be thirsty?”

Darcy shortly pulls out her laptop, checks a few things, prints a few things, and then prepares to leave again.

She purses her lips and looks critically over the office once more before she leaves. Her eyes settle on the little plant. “You need a name,” she says. Then she smacks her palm against the light switch and locks the door with both its electronic and tumble-lock key.

-

Arms training is its own set of qualifications, Darcy learns. Most of her training takes place separate from the incoming ranks - Deputy Director Hill is grooming her for a very particular purpose - but arms evals and the field evals she has to do en masse with all the other grunts. Darcy doesn’t mind; she’s more peeved by the fact that she’s never met the woman who recruited her.

“Can you please just tell me _something_?” Darcy knows she’s whining. She’s been with Seven for the last five days; she also knows she can get away with it.

“Your name was penciled-in to a very large plan left by Agent Coulson,” he says. “We’re putting that plan in action. When _you_ are ready for action, then you’ll be ready for Hill.”

Darcy sighs and presses the elevator button more times than she needs to. “Well, that’s more than anyone has told me yet.”

“Things’ll start picking up,” he says encouragingly. “This week is guns,” he mimes finger-shooting, “and guns,” he pokes his own bicep. Darcy makes a distressed face. “Believe me,” he says, “you don’t want to go into your field evals without any PT. That’s just making your own life harder.”

The elevator continues to descend. “Hey,” says Darcy, “why’d you get stuck with me?”

He smiles at her. “Who says I’m stuck?”

The doors swish open, and they’re immediately met by the muffled, panicky staccato of gunfire from the range. First things first, they register at the desk, and the willowy Latina agent narrows her eyes at Darcy. “Wait,” she orders, and Darcy’s startled into freezing.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” she whispers to Seven.

“You’re fine,” he reassures her.

“Ms Lewis,” says an all-too-familiar voice.

“Oh, no,” says Darcy.

Seven and Clint regard each other with one of those competitive handshakes. “Outta my hair,” the desk agent warns, and their little company starts to make their way down to the end of the range. Clint, beside her, shifts his weight a little awkwardly as they walk, and Darcy reads discomfort in his posture.

“We’ve not been properly introduced,” Clint-the-Muscles says. “I’m Agent Clint Barton, codenamed Hawkeye,” he says, sticking out his hand. Darcy engages him in an equally-competitive handshake, mostly just to see how he reacts. She notices something shift around his eyes, but he doesn’t lose focus. “I’ll be your SO til we’re satisfied, and then Agent Thirteen will take over.”

“Three things, there,” she says, “one: conflict of interest, seeing as how my end-game is going to be team handler? Two: doesn’t an Avenger have better things to do with his time? And three: I get the sense that I’m being shuffled.”

Seven smirks. They pull up at the final station, having already passed four empty stalls. Seven stands just outside of the cubby, and Darcy senses his impending departure.

“One,” Barton replies, friendly enough, “Agent Romanoff and I are going to be the hardest sells on the team; Coulson had a place for you in his master plan, your training included. Prove yourself to me, prove yourself to Agent Romanoff, and we’ll give you the ground to stand on to prove yourself to Hill and Director Fury. That done, I’ll no longer be your SO, and you’ll be reporting directly to Agent Thirteen.” Darcy nods.

“Two,” he continues, tone light, “I’ve been grounded on medical, so no, this Avenger doesn’t have anything better to do. Don’t sell yourself short.”

Darcy reconsiders her previous thoughts regarding the uncomfortable set of his shoulders. “Left knee,” she says, “and at least three ribs? It’s your dominant side,” she remarks coolly.

Seven doesn’t try to hide his smile, and Barton gives her an appraising look. “Good,” he says simply, and then cuts a look to Agent Seven.

“Ms Lewis,” he says, holding out a hand. She gives him a much friendlier shake than the one she shared with Agent Barton.

“Unstuck,” she says simply. He nods and departs.

“What gave away the injury?” Barton asks.

“Your mouth,” she says shortly. He frowns. “Your steps weren’t quite equal and you’re obviously thinking about holding your shoulders flat.” He makes an expectant face. Darcy continues, “And your hands were animated, and perfectly equal, so it’s not actually your shoulders that hurt. And your arms are bare, so.”

“Huh,” he says. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”

She purses her lips. “I prefer tasers.”

Barton sighs. “We know, Miss Lewis.”

He talks, and then walks her through taking apart an automatic pistol before passing it over to her, and has her disassemble and reassemble it so many times she can nearly do it with her eyes closed. When he satisfied, they go over trigger safety, grip, and stance, Darcy repeating things back to him word for word until she’s almost hoarse. She wonders absently about his knee, but standing seems better than walking. It’s not yet her job to babysit him; Darcy figures she’ll take the role-reversal while she can get it.

It’s been nearly two hours, and Barton pulls up two water bottles from nowhere, passing one over. She takes it gratefully, drinking half of it.

“Okay,” Barton says, “the call switch for paper targets is just under the edge.”

Darcy runs two fingers under the lip of the station’s surface, and finds the switch. “There’s just the one, yeah?” she asks over her shoulder, “I’m not throwing a fire alarm?”

“You’re good.”

The switch activates a pulley track that runs on the ceiling. Darcy tracks its progress, and the paper flutters as it clicks into place.

“So,” says Barton, “now the hard part.” Just as before, he walks and talks her through her stance, her grip, her sights, her focus. “Don’t let yourself become another obstacle,” he advises. “When you’re aiming, don’t get locked in your own head.”

Darcy nods. “How much recoil am I expecting?”

“Enough,” says Barton, unhelpfully.

“What’s the cactus’s name?” she asks, looking over her shoulder.

“What,” says Barton, and then she squeezes three shots into the centre of the target, straying no further than eight-zone.

“ _What_ ,” says Barton again, with a little more emphasis.

“Huh,” says Darcy. “That’s pretty slick.” She readjusts her posture and feels Barton nudge the back of her right heel.

“Don’t rely on it so much,” he advises. “Spread your weight a little more evenly; it’ll help you recover from the kick.”

“Yup,” she agrees, and just before she squeezes the trigger again she hears him say, “uh, Christopher.”

Darcy has had people yanking her chain for twenty-three years. She empties the cartridge and scores a bullseye, the eight-zone itself mostly shredded. She puts the gun down on the table, and lifts off her ear protection. He copies her.

“So,” he says, reaching around her to flick the target switch again, bringing it forward, “we can definitely work with that.”

-

Two weeks into her tenure at SHIELD, and Darcy has received her firearm quals with little fanfare. She won’t be allowed open-carry in the facility until she gets her primary field evals done, and Barton assures her the next group is going in two days; she’s moving on to PT, to match up with the group slated for next month. Barton tells her this much when he strolls into her office just after nine.

“Great,” she says, with absent enthusiasm.

Barton balances his chair on one leg and smirks a little. “We’ll get you there,” he says. “But you’ll be with Agent Romanoff, so maybe you should say your goodbyes.” His ribs and knee are much better, and while Darcy doubts she could purposely injure him, one good accident between the two of them could set his progress back by weeks.

“Oh, God,” Darcy moans. “The we’ll-make-you-competent-or-make-you-dead schtick is getting old.”

Barton just laughs. “Go get some coffee,” he says amicably, “I’ll teach you our after-action shorthand, and Nat’ll teach you how to fall down this afternoon.”

“Gotcha,” Darcy says, throwing over her shoulder, “and water Christopher, will you?”

As soon as she steps off the elevator and into the lobby, that’s when someone decides to bomb the daylights out of Midtown, starting with SHIELD’s fake-front small-business entrance and all its seamless walls of glass.

-

The blast passes parallel in front of her, shattered glass and street debris blowing inward with incredible force. Immediately, there’s smoke and alarms and screaming, and Darcy feels disorientation as a physical thing, like she’s completely lost track of which way is up. Gravity gets her to her knees, and the burn of glass grits in her legs gets her back on her feet almost as fast. Her wallet and phone are no longer in her hand, and when she turns to look, her gaze catches on a woman sprawled on the floor, her white blouse flooding with a terrible red across her whole stomach. She’s awake, and she’s staring down her body with the worst kind of horror on her face. Darcy acts on instinct.

“Hey,” she says, getting to her knees and into the woman’s face, blocking her vision and making her focus, “hey, I’m Darcy, and we’re gonna get you help, okay. What’s your name, tell me your name.” She strips out of her jacket and hastily folds it over once, twice. The woman is breathing heavily and Darcy can see where the glass has shredded her torso, where her insides are starting to slip into being her outsides. She puts the jacket down and spreads her hands tenderly; it’s not pressure, not by a long shot, but Darcy can’t think of anything else, the only thing ringing in her mind is to physically hold this woman together.

“Hey,” Darcy says again, breathing against her own panic, “I need you to talk to me, okay?”

“Kim,” she says faintly, “Kim Liu.”

“Whaddaya know,” Darcy says, feeling just the other side of hysterical, “you’re HR, you’ve definitely sent me an email.” She realises then, too, that they’re very close to a pile of rubble that is moderately on fire, which is really excellent. “You’re VIP, Kim Liu,” Darcy says, “and we are gonna get you out of here.”

There’s another explosion, this one farther down the block, and Darcy can feel the panic sweep through the room like a wave. Sirens are wailing, but they’re nowhere near close enough. Kim starts to cough weakly, and blood splatters up Darcy’s arms. The jacket is already soaked through, and where blood that flooded up over the backs of her hands and begun to dry is making her fingers feel sticky and her stomach sick.

Darcy tries to keep talking through it. “Kim, I need you to breathe, okay?” Tears are streaming into her hair and her mouth is open in a silent, terrible expression. “Take a breath, I know, I know, but you need to breathe.”

It’s shallow and gasping and Darcy feels things shift under hands, under the wet jacket, and she tries to spread her fingers further apart. “There, that’s great,” she encourages, “nice and even, baby breaths. We’ll get you there. I’ll get you there.”

Sirens wail closer, and the indistinct screaming becomes commanding shouts. There’s a crash just to her left, and Darcy hazards a look away from Kim to the emergency stairwell, where agents from upstairs are finally making it down, past all the rented-out cover offices of the first four levels. They stream out in efficient black lines, and she sees one man in a black floor-length leather duster take in the sight with outrage writ clear on his face. He turns, and by coincidence she catches his eye - and that’s single eye, because he’s wearing a patch over a long and ugly scar that nearly bisects his face. A dark haired woman appears at his shoulder, as tall and angular as he is, and reports things as they assumably come over her comm. He says a single word and she’s off, gun drawn low, nearly sprinting in her tacsuit. The man’s single eye hasn’t left Darcy’s face, but Kim starts to cough again, and Darcy, Darcy just talks.

“Hey, Kim,” she says, “we talked about breathing, yeah?” She takes an exaggerated breath, “We’re gonna breathe together, okay, let it out, good, and in, baby breath, right on.”

There are hands on Darcy’s shoulders and her head jerks up to see a pair of medics dropping a first aid bag and kneeling with her.

“You’re doing just great,” one of them says, and Darcy doesn’t know who they’re talking to, but no one has said to let go and the hands on her shoulders haven’t moved.

“Was she impaled?”

This one is definitely for Darcy, she watches as they set up an IV and she hopes like hell they’re giving her something for pain. “Hey, Kim,” she says, “we’re gonna get you out of here,” she repeats, tone as steady as she can manage, “we’re gonna breathe right through it.” She doesn’t look away from Kim’s eyes, and she says, “No, she… glass. She’s open,” but she can’t seem to make her mouth work anymore. One medic has placed her hands over and under Darcy’s, the other has Kim in a spinal support and Kim’s eyes are closing as she’s intubated. Darcy suddenly hates any boring medical drama she’s seen, she hates that she knows that word. The hands on her shoulders become more insistent. “Her name is Kim,” Darcy grits out, even as the medic is telling her to let go. “She’s important. Her name is Kim.” The hands on her shoulders grip tighter and lift her away.

-

Barton half-carries her into the back of one of the ambulances, the one farthest away, and she hears him say loudly, over and over as medics rush towards them and then continue rushing past them, it’s not hers it’s not hers, go, I’ve got her, it’s not hers and that’s when Darcy looks down, sees the blood soaked into her slacks, the knees shredded out, sees the splatter on her blouse and across her arms and then her hands, the palms and backs and up over her wrists, covered in Kim’s blood, drying cold and tacky, and that’s when she starts to cry. Barton wraps her in one of those massive, scratchy blankets, wraps her arms around her own torso so she can’t see her hands and then wraps the blanket around her and then wraps himself around her, takes them both down to the floor of the ambulance and tucks her face into the crook of his neck. Darcy’s into full hysterics, she can’t believe what she’s done, what’s happened, what she’s doing, losing it so completely, but there’s no control to be had. She tries to breathe and it gets stuck, tries to apologise but her mouth won’t work, can’t find her hands _doesn’t want to see her hands_ and Barton just holds on to her, a hand on the back of her head. She can hear him speaking but she can’t even hear herself think. She manages to catch one breath, and then another, and then she realises that Barton is breathing with her, Barton is rocking them in time to their breaths, and suddenly everything narrows down to the scar she can see on the edge of her vision, an ancient, terrible slash that hides under the collar of Barton’s shirt. She can feel his throat working where her face is pressed against him and the vibrations start to become words.

She sees only the inside of the ambulance, and even then it’s distorted by the tears, the tears that won’t stop even though the sobbing has. The sirens come back into focus first, and she smells smoke and the awful metallic stink of blood, but then the sirens fade and Barton’s too-close voice wins out.

“You’re good,” he’s repeating, over and over as he rocks them in time to his breathing, “I’ve got you, you’re good.”

-

Darcy has no idea how much time has passed, but it feels interminable, like this morning talking with Barton was both fifteen minutes and fifteen years ago. There is a different kind of distance to the explosion, she feels the exhaustion of it, but also can’t seem to make it real. She rubs her cheeks on the edges of the blanket, and Barton obliges her with tissues. He doesn’t make her use her hands. She can’t quite meet his gaze and gets the distinct impression he can’t meet hers, either. Footsteps approach. Darcy tries to straighten up, and Barton helps, but he keeps one arm tightly across her shoulders. It’s the black man with the eye-patch and a red-headed woman Darcy has never seen. Her tacsuit, however, is black instead of navy, and it’s got multiple utility belts, the topmost of which fastens with a very recognisable insignia. Darcy then realises the only person who could get away with a getup like the man is wearing would have to be the boss. She knows she’s right when she feels Barton tense all over, though his casual position doesn’t change in the slightest. In fact, his shoulders slump in defiance.

“Sir.”

Darcy gets the sense she’s being looked at. The thousand-yard stare is back; the Black Widow seems to be looking simultaneously past her and through her, which is terribly unnerving. The Director’s gaze seems tame in comparison.

“Her name is Kim,” he quotes at her, and Darcy feels sick, “and she is important.”

Darcy swallows and convinces her throat to work. “Sir,” she says.

“Your name is Darcy Lewis,” he tells her, “and you are important, too. You saved her life.”

Darcy blinks.

“Being the good guy is never easy,” he tells her, and Darcy thinks she’s imagining things, that there’s no way a man in this role, of this stature would speak so softly. “But you’ve done a damned good job.” With that, he turns away.

The woman looks at Darcy very carefully. “Right now,” she says, “my name is Natasha.” She looks at Barton and says simply, “The tower.” He nods and slips around Darcy so his feet are on the asphalt. Then he reaches back and slowly lifts Darcy down to her feet. She wobbles, but her balance holds out. Barton puts his arm back over her shoulders.

“We’ll go to the tower,” Natasha continues, “and you will clean up and we will debrief. You will have new directives sent to your email tomorrow.”

“My phone,” Darcy says, “I mean, there’re some passwords, new account numbers,” she mumbles, “I don’t know where it is, if-”

“We’ll take care of it,” Natasha says. “We will deal with it, and then you will sleep.”

Darcy nods mutely, and the three of them walk to a waiting SUV.

-

Darcy stands where she’s told to stand and waits where she’d told to wait. Barton and Natasha trade back and forth in broken sentences that she can’t follow. The tower, of course, turns out to be Stark’s remodelled Avengers Tower. While they’re in the elevator, going up and up and up, she says to Barton, “If, um, later,” she stops when he looks at her intently, and she feels so lost and foolish inside the blanket that she has to catch her breath. “If Dr Foster’s not in, ya’know, Scandinavia, could-”

“Yes,” answers Natasha. “Yes, after.”

The floor they stop at is one long, almost-residential hallway. Barton steps left and Natasha steps right and Darcy stands still, watching them communicate. Barton acquiesces and steps right, and the trio head down the hallway another dozen paces. The door has Natasha’s red hourglass as the image under the knocker, and no handle. She swipes three different cards and punches codes for each of them before the door releases. Barton looks away, feigning boredom.

Natasha puts a hand on her arm as they cross the threshold. It’s beautiful and minimal inside the space, ready for a magazine and remarkably void of personality. There’s a great deal of cream and white and soft blue. Barton heads into the kitchen, leaving them be. Darcy follows Natasha. She pulls out several towels and a new bar of soap from a closet, and then quietly says, “Wait,” while she ducks into the bedroom, reemerging with sweatpants, a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and an athletic bra. Then she leads her to a separate bathroom and closes the door once they’re inside. “Do not look in the mirror,” she advises.

Darcy nods. Natasha starts the water from the bath spout, it roars and steams almost instantly. She crosses her arms over her chest and says, “Wash your hands first. Remember that you saved her life.”

Darcy nods, but the sight of her hands still makes her gut lurch. She kneels by the bath, puts her elbows on the lip of the tub, and watches the red rush down the drain. After a moment, Natasha passes her the soap, watching as she scrubs all the way up to her elbows. After a few minutes, Darcy’s hands are still pink, but it has more to do with heat, and she’s trying very hard not to feel neurotic about it. She digs her nails into the cake of soap and then tries to get the gore out from under them.

“Enough,” says Natasha. Darcy takes a deep breath and leans back, looking at Natasha almost as carefully as she’s being looked at.

“Why,” asks Darcy, even as her voice cracks, “why are you helping me?”

Natasha is leaning against the counter, arms and ankles crossed. Her head tilts just slightly, and Darcy knows she’s supposed to see it. “Why did you help Kim Liu?”

“I had to,” Darcy says.

Natasha does not smile. The water still rushes from the faucet, and the steam is just shy of burning Darcy’s hands. She imagines Natasha’s hair might be curling more tightly, but she can’t picture anything happening to that body without purpose and authority. “Shower quickly,” Natasha advises.

Darcy nods and gets to her feet; Natasha leaves, but stops just before closing the door.

“Throw your clothes into the hall,” she says, “I’ll burn them.”

Darcy does as she’s told, and stepping under the spray she wonders if she’ll ever return this particular favour, wonders if it can even be measured.

-

The week after the explosion there is a tall cardboard box waiting outside Darcy’s office door. It’s stamped with SHIELD’s internal-mail logo and dated that day, with a prominent THIS SIDE UP sticker on the top of. She hefts the box inside just as Barton catches up with her.

“I still think it’s weird that you have an office before you have a job,” he complains, passing over coffee. He’s dressed even less professionally than normal; he’s finally cleared medical and he wants to start her on hand-to-hand with someone larger than herself. Darcy flatly told him that Romanoff remains the most deadly agent in SHIELD’s roster, and he’d just smiled.

“I have a job,” she complains back, “it’s putting up with you.”

He snarls a little, but gets distracted quickly. “What’s that?”

“Dunno,” she says, working at the tape. Barton puts a knife in her hand, handle-first. “You’re wearing yoga pants,” she protests, “where did you put that?” She doesn’t wait for an answer and instead gets back to opening the box.

“Huh,” she says, folding the cardboard away and looking critically at the contents.

“ _What is it_ ,” Barton whines.

Darcy gingerly reaches in and grasps the pot, pulling out a tall, thin plant with a thickly leafy base. There’s a note stuck on a toothpick in the soil.

“ _Sometimes helping hands have Bloody Fingers_ ,” she reads. She passes it off the Barton, saying, “that’s Fury’s handwriting.”

He frowns as he reads it. “It is,” he agrees uncomfortably. “He’s never given me flowers.”

“I don’t know,” she says, “you started the dangerous plants thing.”

“Christopher’s not dangerous,” Barton argues. He jiggles his leg impatiently and then tilts the chair he’s balancing on from two legs to one. “What’s bad about this one?”

“Foxglove is toxic,” Darcy says dryly, “and Christopher is a _cactus_.”

Barton smirks. “You’d be worse off if you touched Romanoff.”

Darcy points at herself. “That’s why smart people don’t,” she says, “and dumb people do,” pointing at him.

“It’s worth it,” he grouses, and Darcy nudges one floating leg of the chair just to piss him off. He wobbles and flails his hands, accidentally flattening his palm over the cactus while he’s not looking. Darcy does her best not to laugh as he hisses and picks at the embedded spines.  “Aww, cactus, _no_.”

“Is it really,” she says.

-

Agent-Romanoff-not-Natasha collects Darcy the morning that her field evals begin. She takes one look at the foxglove, tall enough now to warrant sitting on its own little table near the window, and says, “Call it Mary.”

Four weeks ago Darcy would have said something dumb. Now she just waits; if Romanoff feels like elaborating, she will. Or she won’t. It’s a working theory.

“Мария,” she clarifies. “Because that’s a Carpenter’s Cactus.”

Darcy has just learned two things. One: the Black Widow is actually hysterically funny in a really dark, dad-joke kind of way, but the appropriate reaction is to _not laugh_ at all costs, because that’s where the money is, in the dry, dry desert of her humour. Two: though the cactus came with Barton’s handwriting, it came from Romanoff, perhaps even while she was still call-me-Natasha. Darcy stores the information.

“The cactus’s name is Christopher.”

“Oh,” says Agent Romanoff, “that’s too bad.”

Darcy waters them both before they leave. Field evals are six weeks of promised hell, and she has no idea if she’ll make it back during that time to care for them. She wonders if that was part of Fury’s challenge: mastering bilocation.

“Hey,” she asks, because Romanoff has expressed emotion-based interest in her plants, “if someone could water them, you know, once per lunar cycle or something, that would be snazzy.” She locks the door and she and Romanoff are matched step-for-step as they walk to the elevators. People clear out of their path - Darcy harbours no illusions, she knows they’re actively terrified of Agent Romanoff - and it’s superbly gratifying. “Maybe Seven could do it.”

“Agent Seven is in the Southern Hemisphere,” Agent Romanoff says helpfully.

“Oh.” They step into the elevator; Darcy swipes her card and presses one of the dozens of blank buttons. The elevator is really the trickiest part of the whole thing. “Well,” she says, “or something, you know.”

Then the elevator pulls up at Darcy’s floor. Agent Romanoff nods as she steps off. “You’ll meet Agent Thirteen shortly,” she says, “use it to your advantage.” Then she gets a sly little smile on her face. “I know a guy,” she says, and the smile turns gleeful. “He’s pretty green.”

Just before the doors close, Darcy swears she hears Agent Romanoff stifle a laugh, and she stores that little bit of information, too.

-

“How was it?”

Jane is on the other end of Skype, though Darcy can tell that she’s mostly paying attention to something else in front of her. Darcy gives her an easy answer.

“It was hell.”

“Yeah,” Jane agrees, “but what else? Are you a Bond girl now?”

That’s more than Darcy was anticipating. “No freakin’ way,” says Darcy, “but my ass looks great and I get antsy in crowds now, so, you win some, you lose some.”

“Huh,” says Jane, though she’s clearly focusing on something in her lap. Darcy has known her too long to be bothered. “Oh, hey,” Jane says, “Thor’s h- back, and he was somehow introduced to the idea of graduation presents,” Darcy hears both the aborted _home_ and the question at the end. The only person who would’ve introduced Thor to something so mundane is Darcy, and it definitely wasn’t her, so Darcy’s just as confused. “So what do you want,” Jane finishes.

“What,” says Darcy.

“I know,” says Jane, “I don’t know.”

“Is he there?”

Jane flips the item in her lap closed. “Yeah,” she says, “I’ll let you talk to him. Also, can you convince him out of whatever jewelry thing he’s on?”

“What,” says Darcy, more emphatically, “I was only gone for six weeks.”

Jane isn’t listening. “He thinks he missed a lot of graduations and wants to get me something,” she stands up and clears some space, and Darcy’s vision swims when she moves the laptop sporadically.

“Oh,” says Darcy, “and you don’t want a something?”

“It feels kind of huge,” says Jane, and then Thor’s in the image, and he’s kind of huge, so she can see where Jane’s coming from. They mutter at one another, and as Thor sits Darcy catches Jane’s hand touching his shoulder before she moves away.

“Hi,” says Darcy.

“Hi,” mimics Thor. “How’s spying?” he asks, not trying very hard to not smile.

“Spying’s fine,” says Darcy.

“Good,” says Thor. “You are owed a gift from those who care for you, for your perseverance through adversity.”

“I, uh,” Darcy says, “sure.”

“What would you like?”

“Um,” says Darcy, “let me think for a few minutes.” She opens up a browser and types without looking. “How’s space?”

“Space is...” he says, a little more somberly, “space is recovering.”

“Good,” says Darcy. “Are _you_ recovering?”

“I’ll be fine,” he assures her. A moment passes. “Have you thought long enough?”

“Wha- oh,” she says, and goes back to the browser where she typed deadly plants into the search bar. “Um,” she says, glancing at the images, “um, yeah. There’s a plant called Windflower. Just, uh,” she says, “don’t let it touch you.”

She watches him type, and then watches his face as he reads what is assumably the same page she’s on. He gives her a funny, excessively drawn frown. “Are you certain?” he asks, “would you not prefer a necklace? Or perhaps a decorative holster for your weapon? I was told those were appropriate.”

“No,” she says, smiling easily. “But don’t let Jane talk you out of getting her a ring. I think she just feels weird because you’re here and not very, very far away.”

He nods. “It will be yours, then,” and he pulls out his phone and taps at it delicately before shoving it back into a pocket. “And I shall try to not be so far away again. Our distance, I think, is over,” he says, and Darcy watches the warmth move through his chest when he says it, the way his shoulders settle and his vision drifts, just a little, to where Jane is likely reading on the other side of the room. She feels glad for them both.

“Can I have her back, big guy?” Darcy asks. Thor looks momentarily defensive, and she amends, “I mean, just to talk to, right now. Can I have her back on skype?”

His expression clears, and he smiles at her winningly. “You can try,” he says, “though there’s a journal that’s just come in the mail, and it has snared her truly.”

“She’s arguing with them in her head and figuring out how to prove them all wrong.”

“She is,” he agrees, and he adds with confidence, “and she’ll do it.”

Darcy watches Thor watch Jane, and even though the digital distance it feels bizarre, like watching a film, like two people can’t really be so individual and simultaneously so devoted.

“Hey,” she says, “use this number, if you don’t have it already,” she says, typing in Agent Romanoff’s burner-of-the-week, “introduce yourself, and ask her for jewelry advice.”

“Who is this?” he asks.

“Agent Romanoff. The superspy with the red hair. You know her.”

“I have not seen her wearing gems,” he says thoughtfully.

“Yeah, no,” Darcy agrees, “but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that she probably has great taste. And she would know how to do it without causing a stir.”

“A stir? What would stir?”

“Without context,” Darcy explains, “the rag papers will go nuts if they see you in a jewelry store.”

“A store?” Thor smiles, shaking his head. “Darcy, no,” he explains. “Stark has made available a forge for my use. I would smith it myself.”

“Oh,” says Darcy, a little flabbergasted. “Oh-kay.”

“That does not sound ‘okay,’” he teases.

“Nyah,” she says, “you swing that hammer.”

“I would not use Mjolnir on precious Midgardian metals,” he says, as if this is obvious. And then, “Jane has thrown the journal down. Shall I catch her attention?”

“Nah,” says Darcy. “I’ll just send her emojis until she gets frustrated and calls again.”

“Do you mean the small faces?” he asks. “They are engaging but somewhat obtuse. I am more fond of the snap-chats,” he pronounces carefully.

“What on Earth,” says Darcy, mostly to herself. “I was only gone for six weeks.”

“Perhaps time moved faster in your absence from us. Jane has referred to SHIELD as a black hole, wherein this phenomenon occurs.”

“What,” says Darcy, and then it dawns her that he’s telling a joke. An astrophysics joke. “Actually, you know what, yes. Yes, SHIELD is a black hole. Gravity is taking me, all light has been distorted. Next time I see you, you’ll be the one asking how space was.”

“Okay,” he says amicably. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear.  “Have fun.”

“You too, big guy.”

They wave at one another, and then Skype swooshes away.

Darcy looks at Christopher, repotted and fat and fuzzy. The blossom on his stalk has opened to a light and childish pink. “Look at that,” she says, “you’re getting another friend.” Darcy says another very specifically, because somebody with a green thumb took care of both plants while she was on evals and Mary, the foxglove, is in consequence almost as tall as Darcy’s shoulder. She sends a text to Agent Romanoff, saying thank you, and asking for an email to reach this person at, for further gardening needs. She can’t tell her that she and Barton are going to cold-and-sandy-istan, because that would break protocol, even though she’s fairly certain the two of them already micro-communicate more than she could ever get in a debriefing packet. Such are the ways of spies.

She gets an email back from a spooky ghost account minutes later, labelled with an indecipherable series of letters and numbers and no subject line. The body reads:

_19050994848_

_txt only_

Darcy knows another message would be redundant. She’ll get Agent Romanoff coffee the next time it’s appropriate. She sends a text to the number:

_Hi friend. I m goin away again, back in_

_3 wks, leavin wed. Pls feed Christopher_

_and Mary.Thx._

-

It never comes that, though. The following day she gets a phone call from Deputy Director Hill, telling her that Barton is going to the cold and lonely desert with someone else because the parameters have changed. Darcy understands; by SHIELD standards there’s the deep end and then there’s the Mariana Trench. She’ll be coming to the Triskelion instead; water-wings optional.

“Agent Eight will meet you at the airport,” Hill says briskly. “You’ll be briefed in-transit.”

“How long term is this assignment?” Darcy asks.

“Pack a bag,” says Hill. She pauses. “A large bag.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Hill hangs up.

“Nevermind,” Darcy says to thin air. She looks at Christopher. “Did you hear that?” she asks the cactus rhetorically. “Did someone say ‘jump?’” She sends another text:

_Nvm, friend. Pls come collect_

_Christopher & Mary at earliest_

_convenience. Thx. Tell them I love_

_them._

Then she sends a text to Barton, who is actually labelled in her phone, because he never changes his casual number no matter how much Romanoff snarls at him.

_Change of plans. Bring me back_

_some sand_

Barton sends her an ‘a-okay’ emoji in response.

-

Agent Eight is nowhere near as engaging as Seven was, and he also won’t play Bond-and-Moneypenny, which is twice as disappointing as far as Darcy’s concerned. He hands her a massive folder, and tells her, “We’re trying to help Captain Rogers adjust.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, flipping through the pages. “He’s been living in barracks?”

“We’re trying to help him adjust,” Eight repeats. Darcy starts to wonder if they’ve sent her a Life-Model Decoy.

“Living in barracks is not adjusting,” she says, mostly to herself.

“More of Agent Coulson’s notes were recovered from an assumed-abandoned safehouse. He’d recommended you for the position in particular. His other personnel files were not as detailed, though you’ve proven yourself an asset,” he says, tone bored. Darcy starts to feel like this is entirely too scripted for her comfort. She’s met some agents who weren’t pleased at the way she’s filed through the ranks.

“Alright,” she says, “but I’m not living in barracks.”

“No, Agent Lewis,” Eight agrees. “You’ll check in at the Triskelion first. Agent Thirteen will have another, more detailed debrief for you.”

“Will they?” Darcy asks, “because I’ve been told three times now that I’ll meet Agent Thirteen and it has yet to happen.”

Agent Eight’s face doesn’t move. He focuses back on the traffic, and Darcy continues to read.

Agent Thirteen doesn’t meet her. There’s an office, its locks conveniently set to her biometric cards already. It is almost identical in contents to her old office, including a stack of intimidating documents in her inbox, most of which are stamped with TOP SECRET and SUPER TOP SECRET, which is the dumbest security clearance Darcy has ever come across. She feels like she’s in someone’s club-house tree-fort with sing-along passwords. She crosses her legs, reclines, and gets to reading.

She’s thinking seriously about a cup of coffee when she hears the knock. Standing just to the side of her open door is a very tall young man. He’s in black jeans and a black t-shirt, but his grin is friendlier than any she’s seen in days. “Agent Lewis?” he asks.

“Yes.” Darcy does her best to make it sound like a statement and not a question.

“Agent Triplett,” he says, reemerging from the hallway, this time with a large cardboard box. “I’ve got something that belongs to you.”

Darcy stands and meets him halfway, and he politely stoops so she can peer inside. “Christopher!” she delights. “Maria, you’ve come home!”

Agent Triplett doesn’t hide his smile as he passes over the box.

“Aren’t you a little high-class to be on garden duty?” Darcy asks. She bats his hands away when he makes to reach inside. “Don’t,” she hurries, “they’re poisonous.”

Agent Triplett retracts his hands without hesitation. “We were going in the same direction,” he says. “I was asked to transport them en-route.”

“Oh,” she says, “are you part of Sand Castle?”

Agent Triplett looks at her blankly. “No,” he says, “I’m going to the Bus.”

“Huh,” says Darcy, sitting back at her desk, having put Mary by the window and Christopher on the far corner of her desk. “In that case, we’ve probably both said too much.”

Agent Triplett laughs. “My lips are sealed,” he says.

Darcy looks at him dangerously over her glasses. “Make sure they stay that way, agent.”

Agent Triplett makes a show of tidying up to parade rest. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

“Out,” she says, but they’re both smiling as he leaves.

-

Darcy clears more paperwork in the days leading up to Captain Rogers’ arrival than she had when she was disappeared into SHIELD. When she asks for assignment parameters she’s met with blank faces, like the automaton agents don’t know how to say _Captain America doesn’t have any friends_ , which is really the only thing she’s taken away from the three-inch debriefing binder they’ve given her. Darcy has tried to read it twice now, but the documents aren’t permitted off-site and in some places are so heavily redacted they scarcely make sense. As much as she would like to outline everything contained with the company of a glass of wine, she decides to meet him first, and then make decisions.

When Tall, Blond, and Trying Hard knocks on her door the following morning, Darcy wishes she might have read a little further.

“Hi,” she says, holding out a hand.

“Morning,” he greets, taking her hand in a dwarfing shake. Darcy sits, gesturing at the chair opposite her desk, and she touches the frame of her glasses.

“Well,” she says, “you’ve got just shy of eight hundred emails in your SHIELD inbox, not to mention the physical fan-mail, so what do you say we start there?”

Captain Rogers sits forward a little in his seat. “All right,” he says a little hesitantly.

Darcy pulls out another tablet from her desk. “I’ll give you this for right now,” she explains, “and we’ll go through it together. A great deal of it is junk,” she assures him, “but there are some important memos, and there’ll be some interview and visit requests.”

Captain Rogers makes an uncomfortable face at that.

“Okay,” she slows down. “That face. Do you not want to do any interviews, or is there something else?”

“There’s kind of a lot,” he says.

“Yeah,” Darcy scrolls. “Yeah, there is.” She sighs. “But, hey, we’ll get you a system of filters set up, and it should never look like this again.”

-

He was given an office number, but never a name, and the young woman at the desk doesn’t introduce herself, though she does stand when he knocks. He tries to follow what she’s talking about, though things are still very hazy. The basics, he’s mastered. Toaster, dishwasher, the internet, and Netflix in particular. He misses his slender hands when it comes to the mobile phones, their delicacy a stark contrast to how people handle them, jamming the buttons and throwing them on desks and into bags… but this woman has just listed off three acronyms he doesn’t recognise, and Steve just wants to slow down.

He’s surprised when she does. He watches her watching him, and while he doesn’t know what she sees, he sees her shoulders drop a little, her chin tilt just slightly. There’s a delicate chain around her neck, and it’s very long, so he follows the line of its glitter until it disappears into her shirt and he should look away. “Sorry,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. Sleeping for seventy years hadn’t made him any better with women, apparently. Steve feels incredibly uncomfortable and all the more out of place because this young woman is so relaxed. “You were saying?”

“Tell you what,” she says, “any charities you really care about? Like, sick kids, girls’ education…?”

“Yeah,” he says, following her blindly. “Yeah, that’s all good.”

She takes off her glasses, pinches her nose, and seems to restart the conversation. “Are you a big reader, Captain?”

“Uh,” says Steve.

She grabs a piece of paper and starts scratching at it with a bright blue pen. “These are some pretty important people,” she says, “head to Barnes and Noble, take the subway, and go get lost in the stacks for a few hours. Use your SHIELD charge card.” She hands him the paper.

“I already have a list, ma’am,” he says.

“Then look them up, too,” she says. “Get out of here, get out of the office. I’m watching you crawl out of your skin.”

Steve ducks his head. “That obvious?”

“Stranger in a Strange Land,” she says, and it’s clearly a reference to something. “You’re not the first man from far away that I’ve come across.”

Steve is itching to know how a woman as young and bright-eyed as she got so deep into the dark business of secrets, but he doesn’t ask.

“Come back in a few hours,” she says. “Go spend some time people watching. Grab a paper and a coffee and listen to what people are talking about. Come back with questions,” she says, “and we’ll move forward. Okay?”

“All right,” he agrees. He doesn’t know if he should be grateful or peeved that she’s kicking him out already. As he stands, his eyes catch on a discreet Do Not Touch sign on the taller flowerpot. She follows his gaze and then looks back to her work.

“Why?” he asks, letting the question dangle. Maybe she’ll answer more than one question.

She looks up at him serenely. “Foxglove is deadly,” she says with a small smile.

Steve’s eyes catch on the holster at her hip, but she has already looked away. “Is,” he checks his watch, “is four o’clock okay?”

“Sounds good,” she hums.

Steve leaves the office without further fanfare, at war with his own petulance.

-

He comes back with half a dozen autobiographies in a plastic bag and a newfound appreciation for plain coffee.

“Everyone curses more,” he says when he sits, “and everyone wants things a whole lot faster, but…” He shrugs one shoulder.

“Yeah,” she agrees, apparently powering down her electronics. “People haven’t changed, though.”

Steve nods.

“I’ve got one very important question,” she asks, and Steve realises she’s writing on a pad of real paper, the pulpy yellow legal kind. He didn’t know they still made it. “How do you feel about July Fourth celebrations? On a scale of one to ten.”

“Uh,” says Steve, off-guard. It’s only May, after all. “I know I’m a prop for that sort of stuff,” he says honestly. “But, I mean, I’d rather be somewhere useful than paying lip service.”

“Okay,” she says, “what’s useful, then? Underprivileged kids? Maybe a hospital ward? I could probably even get you an invite to the barbeque at the White House. Do fireworks bother you? They’re not great for vets, I know.” All of this leaves her mouth in a rush, and Steve focuses on a curl that has come loose from her up-do, caught in her open collar.

“It’ll be a long day anyway,” he says, “I can move around.”

She stops writing. “Well,” she says more slowly, “I can veto the really skeezy politicians, but otherwise, if I’m going to make the day bearable for you, I need a little more to work with.”

Steve is silent a moment too long. He’d like to excuse himself, but he doesn’t know her name and there’s no plate on her desk or the door.

“Hey,” she says, “I didn’t ask: do you have any questions?”

“A lot, miss,” he says, keeping his tone artificially light, “but I think I’ll catch on quick.”

She takes a deep breath. Steve can see her patience wearing thin, but he can also tell it’s not directed at him. Maybe it should be. “They really didn’t do much for you, did they?”

He gives her half a smile in an uneven expression. “People haven’t changed.”

Her faces shifts into exasperation. “D’you know that your file mentions your flair for the dramatic, Captain?”

Steve gapes, and the young woman in front of him just gives up and _laughs._

-

It takes time, but Miss - no, Agent - Lewis earns a place with the other Avengers in the shifting spaces of colleague and friend. He brings her an iced coffee on a Tuesday when he normally picks up his mail. “How’d you even start working here?” he asks, “you’re the youngest agent I’ve seen with a level-six clearance.”

Agent Lewis passes over piles and piles of fan mail. “It’s all from little kids,” she says. “Don’t feel guilty about not responding, it’s a school batch.” Then she says, “I know a guy.”

“Yeah?”

“Right place, right time. Or wrong time. Well, I don’t know. SHIELD paid off my student loans, so yeah, I’ll vote right time.”

“Who’s the guy?”

She rolls her eyes and mimes zipping her mouth shut. Steve laughs.

“I get it.”

“You know him,” she adds. “He’s not from here.”

Steve stops short where he was just about to turn away. “I,” he says, “but you’re not an astrophysicist.” He pauses, gut dropping. “Are you?” Steve momentarily fears that he’s been lining to get friendly with Thor’s girl. A stray thought moves wildly through his mind about Asgardians and fondue.

“But I was an intern,” she says, and then singsongs, “ _Started from the bottom now I’m here_.”

Steve feels himself staring blankly, somewhat lost and awash with relief.

“Augh,” she sighs, and reaches waggling fingers at him. “Gimme your phone.”

-

“Hi, Captain,” she greets him. He sits. Agent Lewis pulls out a thin file, and says, “You’re getting a new neighbour.”

Steve squashes his childish disappointment when he realises it won’t be her, and looks at the file a little despondently. Kate, he thinks, looks nice enough.

“You vetted my neighbour,” he complains good-naturedly, “and you read my mail.”

-

When she comes back from Greenwich, Captain Rogers has a blindly relieved smile on his face. “Thank goodness,” he says, stepping into her office. “I heard there were more aliens.”

“Yes,” says Darcy, “but I’m really not supposed to talk about it. Also, if you wait two minutes, I just got a text from Thor; he’s-”

“Are you alright?” Captain Rogers interrupts. He’s in civilian clothes, and she doesn’t know where he keeps his shield. “Are there more aliens?” His expression borders on fraught.

“No!” she says loudly, and the bustle of the hallway momentarily stills before resuming. “No,” she repeats more quietly, “but he says he’s got something for-”

“Darcy!”

Captain Rogers wheels around to face the door and blocks her view; Darcy has to stand and step to the left to see past him. “Hi, Thor,” she says, at a much more reasonable volume.

He’s carrying a very large box wrapped in violently purple paper.

“Did I miss your birthday?” Steve asks her, his tone genuinely apologetic. Thor looks momentarily stricken, as if he’s not already holding a massive gift and therefore off the hook on principle.

Agent Barton appears around Thor’s shoulder, and Captain Rogers does a double take. “Hawkeye,” he says, grasping at straws, “is it _your_ birthday?”

“Dunno,” he says, trailing Thor inside. “It’s purple,” he adds, as if this is reason enough.

Thor looks bothered but unsurprised at Agent Barton’s appearance. He sets the package on Darcy’s desk. “It is your belated graduation gift,” he says. “It proved difficult to transport, given its toxin. Thankfully, Asgardian skin is immune.”

Agent Barton and Captain Rogers exchange looks.

“Oh,” she says, “I don’t want to know how that went.”

“Open it!” he says. Captain Rogers smiles painfully, like he would really rather the box stay closed.

Darcy bustles around the table and sets into the paper, tearing it off in great strips. It’s a terrarium with a mesh cover, filled almost to bursting with a bright green plant. It has hundreds of little white blooms. “Oh,” says Darcy, “it’s lovely.”

“But is it dangerous,” Agent Barton says.

“Yes,” says Thor, and then to Darcy, “please, do not touch it.”

“Yeah, of course not,” she says, and when she looks up, Agent Barton is already gone.

-

Weeks later she gets a spooky anonymous SMS, ostensibly from Agent Romanoff, detailing longitude and latitude and a twenty four-hour timestamp. She plugs the coordinates into google: it’s a cafe down the street. It’s at this point that Darcy realises the spy is playing with a reputation decades in the making and is now riding the crest of that wave. Normal people, she reasons, even normal spies, don’t arrange coffee chats in code.

She straps two extra knives into her garters, just in case.

Agent Romanoff is wearing a hoodie and heeled Chuck Taylors and a distressed pair of skinny jeans. Darcy does not do a double-take, nor does she wait for an invitation to sit.

“Do I have time to grab something?”

Agent Romanoff takes a long, slurping sip from her frothy and chocolatey whatever. Darcy interprets the gesture as in impatient ‘yes’ and ducks inside to join the line. When she comes back outside, Agent Romanoff hasn’t moved.

“I realised you don’t have a safe place,” Agent Romanoff tells her.

Darcy frowns and sips her coffee. “I do,” she says, “I have an apartment. A SHIELD apartment, even.”

“Not that kind of safe place,” Agent Romanoff says, pulling her feet off the adjoining table she’d sprawled over. “Walk with me.”

Darcy hurries to catch up and Agent Romanoff doesn’t alter her pace. “Rule number one,” she says, “when you’re going on the run don’t run, walk.”

Darcy changes her stride and breathes deeply. “Are we running?”

“Not yet,” says Agent Romanoff. They stop at a traffic light, and Agent Romanoff snaps her gum, shifts her weight, fiddles with her earrings, twitches her mouth. Darcy catalogues all of these motions, thrown off by how little it feels like Natasha Romanoff standing next to her. They step off the curb in sync. Darcy notices how superfluous, how _untidy_ it seems when Agent Romanoff bumps into her to avoid someone who won’t look up from their phone, and then she notices that she was supposed to notice.

When the crowd thins, she asks, “What did you drop in my bag?” She doesn’t reach for the object yet.

“A pair of keys,” she says, “and a thumb drive with the relevant information. Look at it on a public computer and memorise it. Then delete both versions and crush the drive.”

“Agent Romanoff,” Darcy says, her breath catching, “what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and then something complicated passes over her face. “I don’t even know if I can trust you.”

Darcy’s protestations have nearly climbed out of her throat before she realises the enormity of the admission. Instead she swallows, and then says, “What do you need from me.”

The corner of Agent Romanoff’s mouth twitches upwards for less than a second. No other part of her face moves. “Be on my team,” she says eventually. “And when I say ‘run’-”

“Walk,” Darcy finishes.

-

In late September Steve knocks on her half-open door. “Agent Lewis,” he says, hauling on his courage from where it has fallen to his knees, “would you come to the award show with me?”

Warm pleasure sinks all the way down to his boots when Steve realises she’s blushing.

“You’re still going to the tailor on Thursday,” she insists.

“‘Course,” he responds by rote. “Should I, uh, meet you at your apartment?”

Agent Lewis blinks. “Um,” she stutters, “Captain, the award show is in Los Angeles. Your airline reservation is in the email, too, but I can print it here.”

“Oh,” says Steve dumbly. “Will they let you away, then? SHIELD, I mean.”

“I’ll handle it,” she says lightly.

“Are you sure?” he asks, feeling guilty for having thrown such a demand on her.

“Sure,” Agent Lewis smiles. “It’ll be fun.”

-

Flying commercial is a comedy of errors. She forgets his _Call me Steve_ first thing in the morning when she climbed into the hired car, and he’d met her greeting with an equally formal _Agent Lewis_ in return. Since then, the morning has been a stiff and uncomfortable arrangement, the casual atmosphere at war with their manners. While she’d insisted they call it a work function immediately after he extended the invitation, Darcy regrets not booting the excessive professionalism when she had the chance. Instead, she sucks down a frothy frozen mocha as large as her head and tells him, “If I’m cold on the inside I won’t get a headache,” to break the proverbial ice as soon as they’ve passed security.

“What,” says Captain Rogers.

“Airplanes are cold,” she complains. “You’ll see.”

Captain Rogers’ steps falter.

“Oh,” she says quickly, “oh, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. Shit.”

“Airplanes are plenty cold,” he says, still not moving. “I know.”

Darcy feels herself flush from her lips all the way around to the back of her neck. “Oh my God,” she mumbles. He won’t quite meet her gaze straight-on, however, and when she steps in front of him to better apologise, she realises he’d biting the inside of his cheek, his eyes bright and eyebrows raised.

“ _Oh my God_ ,” she says again, feeling slack-jawed. “You-”

“I would never make fun at a girl’s expense,” he says smoothly, tilting his head.

Darcy’s breath leaves her in a rush. She opens her mouth, but the words aren’t there, and she purses her lips in consternation. She resumes walking, half a step ahead of him. “No one told me Captain America was an asshole,” she grits.

He lets out a bark of laughter that has strangers’ heads turning. She grabs his sleeve to haul him back into motion, and the curious audience becomes bored by the drama of the travelling young couple. The jilted and awkward formality of the car has finally evaporated, leaving them in a mood of friendly conspiracy. They walk the length of the terminal to find their gate, meandering through the maze of people and personal outbursts. Darcy is familiar with the bustle and hostility, but Captain Rogers can’t seem to take it all in. He fiddles with his sunglasses impatiently, constantly peering over the top edge of the frames to watch the people around them.

“Why is that young lady crying,” he leans down to ask quietly, pointing to a bench near the women’s washroom.

“Because,” dismisses Darcy. “And don’t point.” She checks their boarding passes again, and mutters to herself, peering over the edge of her sunglasses to read the handwritten details about their gate number.

“That man is yelling at his daughter!” he says a moment later, hastily correcting, “Uh, wife,” in an awkward tone.

Darcy distantly hears _did I even marry you_ and decides to listen no further. “Uh huh,” she says. “We go left up here.” She grabs his sleeve when he continues to walk past her. “I said _left_.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “There’s a crying kid-”

Darcy glances over her shoulder and sees the telltale Swiss Air logo on the gate’s arrival’s monitor. “That was an international flight. The movies are all terribly dubbed. I’d be crying, too.”

“But-”

“C’mon,” she says, stopping short at a fogged glass wall. “I think this is us.”

-

Steve knocks on her door promptly at four in the afternoon. He resists tugging his cuffs from force of habit and finds himself startled that the fit isn't atrociously uncomfortable. He recalls with a smile how the grim little tailor had set about his shoulders with nary a word and an expression that wavered between incredulity and sheer determination. Steve can raise his arms over his head without the fine navy wool threatening to tear at its seams, which is more than he can say for his first round of experimental tailoring seventy years ago.

Agent Lewis opens her door while his vision is still fogged with memories. Steve brings himself back to the present with just enough time for his breath to catch. She's in a tight red number with sheer lace cutouts in unexpected places. Steve resolutely keeps his eyes on her face. " _Wow_ ," he tells her sincerely.

She mutters into her clutch as she puts away her room key and double-checks she's brought the right lipstick, and then she looks up at him, grinning warmly. "You clean up pretty nice, too." Steve measures his steps as they head to the elevators, aware of the height of the slender shoes she's wearing, but she keeps pace with him much better than he anticipated.

She catches him looking at her heels while they wait. "Very different?" she asks.

"They're something else," he tells her, omitting how the nude tone accentuates her ankles, the lean lines of her calves. "Are you comfortable?" he asks, jerking a thumb back towards their rooms, "before you commit to them all night?"

"I'm fine," she tells him. "I love these babies."

Steve nods and tries to not swallow his tongue. "You'll be alright, if we have to walk, or stand?" he asks. They step together into the elevator - Steve's hand hovers at the small of her back. The etiquette is apparently still in style and occasion-appropriate; Agent Lewis gives him a small smile, her brows relaxed and her gaze unbothered. He lets his hand fall away for the duration of their descent, only to repeat the motion with greater confidence when they step out to the marbled lobby floor.

"Oh, yeah," she assures him easily. "But if we could get to the carpet-" she clings to his suit jacket momentarily, and Steve's hand catches at the dip of her waist for just an instant as she regains her balance, "-sidewalks and carpets are fine, even normal tile is okay," she grumps as she smoothes her palms over her skirt, "but polished marble makes me nervous."

"That makes two of us," Steve tells her companionably. "Now," he says, leaning closer to her ear as they make their way across the lobby and even in this place, the heads turn to follow them, "I don't mean to spoil the night, but how would you like to play this?"

Conversation pauses as Steve hails a valet to fetch their rental; Agent Lewis matches his intimate body language, but he can still see a twinge of discomfort around her eyes. He holds her hand as she steps up into her seat and then closes her door. "Also," he says as he climbs in, "do you know where I'm going?"

Agent Lewis pulls her phone from her purse. "Get us out of the lot, and then go right," she tells him. When they make it to the next set of lights, she sighs. "And there are a couple of ways we could do this."

"Your call," he tells her. He feels like enough of a dog for his lingering glances that follow the lace cutouts, weighing the curves and shadows contained in her dress. She really looks incredible, but Steve reminds himself that he doesn't have permission to look too long. He's not going to corner her with a play-pretend act that satisfies his own ambitions.

"Well," says Agent Lewis, "this is only in the event that anyone actually asks," and Steve tries not to scoff, "because you never know, you might not be the big fish tonight. Paparazzi are unpredictable. Sometimes." She checks her phone and interrupts herself with: "Take the next right and then follow the parkway for another, like, six miles. So, if anyone asks, we'll just say friends."

"Alright," Steve agrees.

"Don't say colleagues," she advises. "And we'll both try not to be so formal. The last thing either of us need is for something to think I'm your babysitter."

Steve casts a glance askance at her.

"Not only does it make you look like a bumbling fuddy," she tell him, "it's not great news for me. Once the rags know my face they'll probably start looking for me at the tower."

Steve feels a pique of guilt for not having thought of that, but Agent Lewis beats him to it. "Don't," she says, "we're here for a good time-"

"Not a long time," he butts in.

" _Who?_ " she demands, distracted. "Nevermind. But yes. Let them figure out that we work together on their own."

A valet takes the car when they arrive. There's a long walk ahead of them once their tickets are collected, but as _Don't-Agent-Lewis-me_ Darcy assures him, the red carpet proves an easy, if slow, meandering walk. They pose endlessly against the wall of sponsor advertising with increasingly plastic smiles and increasingly close postures, and by the time they make their way toward their seats, Darcy passes her phone to him.

"Look," she says, "Twitter's going insane."

Steve glances through highlights that range from the predictable _#whosthatchick_ and the repeating headline of "Captain America for Gay Rights.” His attention catches on one article that touts "Patriotic Showing of Support" and "Captain Steve Rogers and Friend Color the GLAAD Media Awards in Red, White, and Blue" with an accompanying photograph that is actually quite flattering.

"That one's actually kind of snappy," he says, passing her phone back. Darcy takes his hand as they navigate the dark steps. He gets to the bottom first and fits his free hand at the dip of her waist, her other hand still in his as she pauses two steps above him.

"Let's go dancing after," he blurts.

A searing flash blanches the air around them. They both blink and grimace at the sudden intrusion in the dim seating area. An usher speeds towards the culprit, hissing a warning. Steve sees himself in his mind's eye; they're in an intimate posture while he looks up at her with what's surely stupid affection on his face, probably at the exact moment he tripped over his own infatuated tongue. And it's probably already on Twitter. So much for the _just friends_ line they'd been feeding the paps and interviewers not five minutes earlier.

"Alright," she tells him. Darcy doesn't let go of his hand as another usher, an impeccably polite young man with neatly braided dreads, leads them to their seats.

Before turning away, the young man says, "If you think anyone tries to take more photos, sir, don't hesitate to wave one of us down."

Steve clears his throat. "Thank you," he says sincerely.

-

They wander back out into the warm, dense night and Steve steps up to take the keys from a valet. He nods his thanks and helps Darcy into the SUV, stifling a laugh into his fist when her stomach growls enormously. Darcy dissolves into giggles and pushes him away so she can close the door. It's no good, however, because as soon as Steve hauls himself into the driver's seat, his own stomach rumbles just as loudly as hers, and Darcy hoots with laughter.

"Nevermind dancing," she tells him, wiping at her drooping mascara, "let's go get drive-thru."

They make it back to the hotel just as the vehicle's radio rolls over to midnight. They have already downed the entirety of their chocolate milkshakes and are subsequently goofy with sugar. Steve carries two truly enormous paper bags of fragrant, greasy snacks and Darcy carries her clutch in one hand, her shoes dangling by their straps from her loosely curled fingers. They receive incredulous and disgruntled looks from the lingering guests and staff in the hotel's lobby, and giggling like children they dash to the bank of elevators. Darcy lets out a stifled shriek when she bumps into Steve's back.

"Oh my God," she tells him, shoving him into the elevator, " _oh my God_ , hit the button, quick, they're gonna to kick us out." She pants for a moment, and then says, "Oh, man, I'm hungry."

Steve's stomach grumbles in commiseration and they both dissolve into laughter again. "I'm always hungry," he tells her as they step off at their floor, "but did you not eat before we left?"

"Are you kidding?" Darcy says. "Have you _seen_ this dress?"

"I've been trying not to," Steve tells her in a fit of honesty, but his expression aims for teasing.

"Oh, no," Darcy complains, as she leans against her door and roots around for her room key, "the whole point of this dress was looking."

"Yeah?" Steve asks, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"Yeah," she agrees, and she peers at his face for a moment, tossing her shoes into the room without a care. "Yeah. The paps, the internet... you. You're meant to look."

Steve sets the food bags down on the coffee table and he sits heavily. Then, very deliberately, he looks at her, letting his eyes stray and linger with her permission. A blush starts to flame her cheeks, but she keeps her expression neutral. She turns away, pulling her phone from her clutch and then tossing the bag onto the bed where it bounces into the pillows. She leans over to plug her phone in to charge. Steve's eyes follow the curve of her ass, the sleek line of her calf, the milky skin revealed as her hem rides further up her thigh.

Steve leans forward and shrugs out of his jacket, then hooks a finger in his tie and loosens it enough to undo the first button of his shirt. Darcy perches on the edge of the bed, bare legs stretched out before her and crossed at her ankles, her toes working nervously in the deep pile of the carpet.

Steve puts his elbows on his knees, unbuttoning his cuffs by feel and rolling them halfway up his forearms. When he finishes, he laces his fingers together in the space between his legs, tilting his head a little to the side. His gaze never strays from her.

She leans back on her hands just a little and the tension thickens palpably. Her chin juts a little with the air of challenge. “What are you looking at?” she asks, her tone angling. She arches one foot, flexing her ankle.

“Lookin’ at you,” Steve tells her. The only light in the room is behind her, leaving her features shadowed. The moment hangs in suspension.

“Done looking?” she asks.

“Am I?” he replies.

“No,” she says, slipping off her perch and walking to the other end of the couch, curling into the corner. She reaches for one of the drive-thru bags, “but I’m not posing any more.”

Steve looks at her seriously. “I don’t want you to pose,” he tells her. “If you…” he starts, “if we…” He stops, swallows, and turns his whole body towards her. “Whatever happens,” he says, “here on out. Please, Darcy, I don’t want you to pose for me. I’d rather you be yourself than some imagination of what I might want. I don’t matter.”

“You do,” she tells him, but she won't meet his eyes. And then she pokes his thigh with her toe. “You should eat, too.”

Steve puts his hand on her knee just long enough for her to look at him, and then he draws it away. “If you don’t…” Steve swallows his words, getting bogged into his own anxious, negative thoughts. He reaches for his discarded jacket and stands.

“Goodnight, Darcy.”

“Hey!”

She snags him by a belt loop and uses his own surprise against him, hauling him back down to the couch. “I never said _don’t_ ,” she tells him. “I said you should eat.”

He looks at her face searchingly and she meets him. He sits.

“Alright.”

They eat, side by side, thigh to thigh, until everything is gone and the table is littered with greasy paper napkins. By the end, Darcy is mostly just watching him and leaning back on her elbow. Steve turns his face away to stifle a belch in his arm and Darcy collapses back to the wing of the couch, laughing. Steve makes a disgusted sound at himself.

“Yeah,” says Darcy. “You hadn’t had fast food yet, I guess?”

Steve shakes his head. “Ugh, no. I already feel gross.”

“Yeah. It’s instant gratification, long-term regret. But everybody’s gotta do it. It's an American institution.” She hiccups once, twice.

Steve groans and leans back, his face tilted up to ceiling.

“It was a really great night, otherwise,” he tells her. When he opens his eyes again and turns to look at her, his breath stutters.

Darcy is obviously happy, full and sleepy. One foot is in Steve’s lap and his left hand is wrapped loosely around her ankle. Her other leg, however, is bent and pressed against the back of the couch, her shin lined up with his arm. The hem of her skirt clings indecently high on her thighs and Steve catches himself staring at the shadow cast on the soft inside of her thigh. He spies a discreet black strap, and his pulse jumps when he realises she's been wearing a knife all night. Darcy doesn’t catch him, and he looks away, down to where his thumb gently bumps over the bone of her ankle.

“Okay,” he says.

“What?” asks Darcy.

He holds a hand out to her, and she sits up from her sprawl, blinking sleepiness out of her eyes.

Steve tosses his jacket over his arm and stands.

“Oh,” says Darcy.

Steve braces his weight with one hand on the back of the couch and he leans down, waiting for her permission before he presses a kiss to the corner of Darcy’s mouth. She leans into the touch momentarily, her open hand on his shoulder.

Steve pulls away. “Good night, Darcy.”

She smiles at him. “You, too.”

-

During their return flight the following day, Darcy dozes against Steve’s shoulder. Her face is turned towards him, her breath ghosting over the hollow of his throat. Steve tries to read, he tries to sketch; the distraction, however, proves too much, and instead he closes his eyes, the dull roar of the aircraft barely registering.

-

They are only returned to DC for a matter of days before the Potomac opens.

-

An unfamiliar voice announces that Captain America is a fugitive wanted by SHIELD for information on Director Fury’s death. Darcy doesn’t fucking buy it.

Two hours later the captain’s voice comes over the system, and he says, “It’s time you know the truth.” He says, “The price of freedom is high.” Around her, there are equally fervent shouts. _Hail Hydra_ is met with _Captain’s orders_ and the air around her is thick with the copper stink of blood and bullets and screams before she’s even out of her office.

She has two guns, twelve packs of additional rounds, and four knives. She moves through the tower with predatory deliberation, Agent Romanoff's dictate of _walk, don't run_ turning over and over in her head. She fights her way out of the Triskelion by the skin of her teeth, making her way outside in time to see the Helicarrier slam into the north tower. Hydra agents are taking advantage of the confusion, and she shoots, kicks, and fights back with her entire worth. Someone much bigger than her nearly catches her by the neck and she hangs on, using her centre of gravity and shorter stature to swing him over her shoulders and send him sprawling out on the concrete before her. His knife sweeps shallowly across her hip and ribs. His head bounces violently on the concrete but he manages to reach for her ankles, baring bloody teeth when he hisses, “Hail Hydra!”

Darcy stomps on his face before his hands can catch her, and without thinking it through she palms a knife and guts him, belt buckle to chin, in one vicious slice. Bullets whiz past her head and she runs, tumbles, rolls, and manages to duck behind one of the eagle pavilions just as the roar and thump of helicopter blades become unbearably close. She looks up, weapons trained, only to see a black man in a t-shirt nearly roll out of the bird before being hauled back inside. Over his shoulder, Darcy spots a familiar flash of red. The copter banks to the opposite side and Darcy focuses back on the ground, where someone with a grenade launcher lining up for the shot not twenty paces away; she puts a bullet cleanly through his neck. The round subsequently goes long and low, striking a vehicle on the boulevard and shaking the whole street. The helicopter has climbed and gone west, where the second helicarrier is seconds from slamming into the Potomac.

The square has cleared and the air immediately around her is still. There are other helicopters now whirring overhead and the skyline echoes with the unbearable cacophony of the helicarriers burning and crashing, but it all seems just out of reach. She clears three half-dead Hydra agents of their weapons, taking a bad shot to the shoulder from one in the consuming throes of his death rattle. She finds an abandoned car on the boulevard, and thusly armed drives east. The roadways are in absolute disarray. She trades the vehicle out twice more as a precaution, using any spare clothing she can find to pack around her shoulder. Darcy leaves the second SUV on the other side of a school parking lot. There are dozens of backpacks thrown against the fence; she takes one, stuffing it full of the more conspicuous weapons, and then hops a bus until she’s only eight blocks from the safehouse Agent Romanoff established.

Darcy winds an excessive route to get there, ensuring that she’s not being followed, she’s not being watched. There was a massive black hoodie in one of the cars she’d taken, and she’s wearing it over her bloody blouse; when she’s finally at the door of the top-floor walk-up, keys and knife in hand, she takes a steadying breath and hopes like hell there’ll be a friendly face on the other side.

-

She showers quickly, performs a little auto-surgery in the foggy mirror with her teeth clenched, and then dresses and packs a small go-bag from what’s available in the various closets. Refreshed and jittery, she downs a bottle of water and then puts on a pot of coffee, grabbing a tablet from the storage closet. None of the social networks are helpful; everything has been dumped and everyone is too overwhelmed and shocked to have come near to processing what’s happened. She gets to the source documents, pours a cup of coffee, and puts a pistol on the couch cushion beside her, settling in to read.

Darcy is only ten pages in when she hears the uneven beat of walking footsteps approaching the door. The security panel is loud enough to cover her movements; she slides up to the corner from the door, using the wall as cover at her back. She stills her breathing and feels her heart pound relentlessly inside her ribs, obstinately thundering in her controlled panic.

“-auh,” a young woman’s voice drops mid-syllable when the door swings open.

There’s a terrible moment of silence and nobody breathes.

Darcy can tell by the shadows on the floor that there are two people, one - probably the woman who spoke - much smaller than the other. Then there’s a familiar sound, the soft clatter of carbon-shafted arrows and the whisper of a bow’s draw. She takes a chance.

“Barton?”

There’s a stuttered breath. “Lewis?”

Darcy doesn’t move, but she lets out a quiet, relieved sigh. “Thank God,” she says, but she doesn’t ease the safety. “But seriously, whose team you on?”

She can feel the exchanged expressions between the two in the doorway.

“Natasha’s,” Barton says after a beat.

“Great,” says Darcy. “Now, close that door before you let all the neo-Nazis in.”

“Are you going to holster your weapon?” asks the female voice.

“Nope.”

There’s the whir and gear-like clunk of the door’s security lock. Darcy still hasn’t moved from her cover.

“Fury’s dead,” says Barton. She hears the shuffle of his boots, an uneven step-and-drag. She wonders if someone took a crack at his bad knee.

“Doubt it,” says Darcy.

Both voices chorus from the doorway. “ _What._ ”

“C’mon,” Darcy cajoles, “you’ve been working with the Widow for what, ten years? Don’t ask me to buy that you can’t read her after-action shorthand.”

Barton’s boots stomp around the corner, and Darcy draws up her pistol until it presses into the hollow of his sternum. They’re face to face.

“Whoa,” says his female companion, two steps behind. She’s also drawing a bow, her gaudy purple suit garish in the dim hallway. Darcy notices the hip cut-outs and fails to see how they’re useful. These up-and-comers, really.

“Take a step back, Clint,” Darcy breathes. “It's been an ugly day.”

He does as she says, hands open and palms up.

“Christ,” he says. “You’re bleeding.”

Darcy doesn’t look. She knows why her shoulder aches. She could only stitch the front of it closed; the bullet’s exit on the back of her shoulder is hopelessly fastened with butterfly bandages. She can feel the hot leak of blood on her skin, the tacky-slick sensation where her shirt sticks to the wall.

Barton waves a hand at his companion. “Put it down, Kate,” he says, not taking his eyes off of Darcy.

“She’s gotta drop hers.”

“Hey,” says Barton, “you’re good.”

Darcy exhales slowly. “I got you.” She lowers the gun, closes her eyes, and tilts her head back against the wall for a moment, letting her breath feed her starving, thundering heart.

Clint slowly pulls her forward into an embrace, her nose pushing into his body armor. “Yeah,” he says, and she feels the words rumble deeply in his chest, “but I got you first.” Darcy wraps her arms weakly around his middle and for a moment, she just holds on.

-

Clint is better at working through Romanoff’s various stashes of weapons and electronics. Kate - the other Hawkeye - insists that they all eat something more substantial than coffee. They camp out in the small living area - two long, sturdy, battered leather couches and an equally abused wooden table - filtering through documents.

“You don’t think Fury’s dead?” Clint asks after a long moment.

“Why else would she write out, Fury, Nicholas Joseph Jr. December 21, 1951 out of order to all the other instances?”

“What do you mean?” asks Kate.

“That’s not how any of the other birthdates are written,” Clint explains. “Gimme the pages.”

“Twelfth page, twelfth line-”

“-twelfth word,” Clint finishes, reading, “ _Fury_.”

“Twenty-first,” says Darcy.

Kate swipes quickly. “ _Is_ ,” she says.

“Nineteenth?” asks Clint.

“ _Not_ ,” replies Darcy.

“Fifty-first?” asks Kate, “there isn’t a fifty-first line.”

“Count down from the next page,” say Clint and Darcy simultaneously. They don’t look at each other. Instead, Clint flips on to another section, sucking coffee straight from the pot. The women gave up on arguing him off of it. “How did you get it?” he asks Darcy.

“Huh,” interjects Kate, finding the last word. “I see what you mean.”

“It’s pretty bald-faced,” Darcy replies. “Grammatical or stylistic faults, typos or errors she would never make unless they were on purpose. It all goes back to a numerical pattern, and then it’s just finding the words in order.” She stops and looks at him. “It took you years to notice,” she crows.

“Cool it,” he threatens. Then he says, “I didn’t realise I should have been looking.”

Kate looks at him carefully.

“Before I brought Romanoff in, I was just muscle. I don’t play her games,” he says, “and I’m not very good at them still.”

A phone buzzes violently against the table. Kate leaps on it. “America found a nest of your baddies,” she says, looking at Clint. She’s already standing, swinging her bow over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Billy says they’re waiting for an extraction. It looks like they’re all pulling back to Europe.”

“Okay,” says Clint, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

“Nah,” says Kate, adjusting her belt. “But I want your explosive head.”

Darcy frowns.

Clint groans. ‘Aw, girly-girl.”

“C’mon,” she holds out an impatient hand. “Like you don’t have stuff to settle here.”

Darcy narrows her eyes. “What are you implying?”

“I’ve met Romanoff,” says Kate. “You’re getting more out of these documents than I’ve ever even heard in conversation.”

Darcy shrugs. “We think the same way.”

“Exactly,” says Kate. “So tell him how to be useful.”

“Hey,” protests Clint, but there’s little heat in it.

-

Darcy camps at the safehouse for another three days. She gets another spooky anonymous SMS to the cell she activated from the stash in the closet. The only people with the number are the Hawkeyes.

_expect friendlies <48 hours_

“All right,” says Darcy to the empty apartment. She convinced the Hawkeyes to bring back produce before they moved on, and she crunches on an apple while plucking at the stiff stitches in her shoulder. The scar will be badass, she convinces herself.

-

They knock.

Darcy answers the door with her gun level, using her foot to swing it open. Rogers’ face startles, but his companion looks curious, if serious. He’s got muddy-coloured bruising over the ridge of one cheek, that eye still slightly swollen. The collar of his leather jacket is open and she can see less-healed bruises ringing his throat.

“Captain,” she says, stepping to the side and pulling her arms back against her chest. As they step inside she peers down the hall, but it’s just as dank and dusty as four days ago.

“Agent,” he replies. His expression is stern, less unfriendly but certainly unhappy.

“Not an agent anymore,” she says, resetting the lock and turning to face them. She holsters the gun on her thigh - the armpit holster too uncomfortable to manage. “Who’s this guy?”

He holds out a hand. “Sam Wilson,” he says, “former USAF, pararescue.”

“Hi,” she shakes, locking her elbow to save her shoulder. “Just Darcy.”

Captain Rogers works himself out of his jacket and Darcy’s eyes follow the stiff motions of healing muscles. “Not ‘just Darcy,’” he corrects her. “Lewis was our overseeing liaison while the Avengers and SHIELD needed to cooperate.”

“Come on,” Darcy says. “I have coffee, and files.” She turns on her heel. “Wait,” she asks, “you both know Fury isn’t dead, right?”

“Dude,” says Sam, turning wide eyes on Steve. "Goddamn."

Rogers swipes a hand over his face. “She and Nat have some shorthand worked out,” he says.

The trio make their way into the little galley kitchen. “No,” disagrees Darcy, “I just know how to read her. Also, it means I know where to look for the things she won’t say out loud.”

Sam Wilson blinks. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No,” says Darcy again. “Because she knows I know, so she only tells me what she wants me to know.”

Rogers stirs sugar into his coffee and hers. “Now, that sounds like Nat,” he says affectionately. He pushes the mug into her hands.

“Tell me about Pierce,” she says.

Rogers swallows. “Don’t you have all the files.” It’s not a question, and his voice has gone from amicable to cold.

“Sure,” says Darcy, walking away from them and into the living room, where four laptops and three tablets are running various content-matching algorithms. She likes things organised, and she wants what she knows of Romanoff’s between-the-lines written out coherently. “But that’s not the same as you telling me how he was acting. What words he actually said, and in what order.”

“It’ll tell you more than all that?” Wilson asks, making a challenging face at the devices on the coffee table.

Darcy doesn’t answer his question, instead posing one of her own. “How many tours did you serve?”

Wilson blinks at her owlishly. “Two. Afghanistan.” She and Rogers sit, but Wilson remains standing, on edge. Darcy hears Rogers sigh quietly.

“Senior Airman,” she says, and when he bristles she corrects herself. “No, Staff Sergeant. Honourably discharged. You lost somebody and you kept fighting anyway.”

“What the hell,” Wilson says, tone low.

“It’s written all over you,” Darcy says impatiently, “that’s the way people work. So, Rogers,” she turns, tone emphatic, “please tell me what Pierce said.”

“Pierce is dead,” Rogers says. “I wasn’t there.” Wilson sits uncomfortably on the opposite couch.

“Yeah,” she says, “but Hydra doesn’t really care. Cut off one head…”

“I don’t ever want to hear that again,” complains Wilson.

“Don’t blame you,” says Darcy, “but you’re gonna hear it until we figure out a lot of things.” She sips delicately from her steaming coffee.

“What do you need?” asks Rogers. “We’ll help where we can, but we’re…”

“I know,” she says, and Wilson watches as her whole demeanour changes. “You’re gonna look for him?”

Rogers puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward, staring at his hands. His voice is much smaller when he speaks. “I gotta, Darcy. Everything he did for me, before the war…”

Darcy almost reaches for his hand, but she bails on the motion and goes for her mug instead. Wilson watches in fascination.

“Look at that,” she says kindly, “we’ve gone and given you another war.”

“Gettin’ tired of it,” he says. “I was tired of it 1945.”

“Then we need to clean up quick,” she says, “so you boys can come home.”

-

“Hey,” says Steve - _please call me ‘Steve’, Darcy_ \- the following morning, “you didn’t get that cactus out, did you.”

“No,” says Darcy a little sadly. “Christopher and Mary and Delilah all went down with the ship. Which is a shame, because someone was taking very good care of them,” she says. “Also a shame, because I don’t know when Thor can get me another windflower.”

Sam looks at her funny.

“When I was gone on ops,” she clarifies, “Romanoff arranged for someone to take care of them. She said she knew guy with a green thumb.”

“A green…?” Steve’s coffee mug is stalled halfway to his face. “Oh, man,” he says, putting down the cup. He scrubs a hand over his face, and Darcy notices with envy that all his bruises are gone. “He’s got a green thumb, all right.” Steve swallows his laughter.

Darcy makes a face at Sam, but he just shrugs. “What do you know?”

Steve breaks into giggles again. “She wasn’t lying. Oh, man.”

She narrows her eyes.

“Nope,” says Steve. “Also, I don’t think the south tower ever went down. I think the FBI are the ones in charge of cleanup.”

“We’ll see,” says Darcy. “You guys are gone looking for your guy, and I get it. I don’t know where I’m needed.”

Steve holds out his hand. “Gimme your phone.”

She passes it over and watches as he taps at it carefully. “Get in touch with Stark. That’s where Maria went.”

“Huh,” she says, taking back the phone. After a moment, she asks, “And what about Kate?”

“Her name isn’t Kate,” Steve says, tone souring.

“Okay,” says Darcy, “and she’s not your neighbour either. “What about her?”

“I don’t know,” says Steve. “What about her?”

Sam gets up from the opposite couch, his exit noticed and unmentioned.

Darcy impatiently sweeps her hair away from her face. She feels it pull in her shoulder, the hot trickle that says the damned thing is bleeding again. She grimaces and pulls at the collar of her shirt, and Steve gets into her personal space. He hooks one finger into her collar, pulling it back to expose the wound. Red leaks through her shirt, blooming outwards.

“It’s too late to close this properly,” he says.

“I was fresh out of help,” she replies, tone sharp.

He doesn’t pull his hand away from her shirt. His eyes linger over the slope of her neck, the line of her shoulder. The collapse of SHIELD hasn’t left him as rootless as he thought it would; he feels powerful and capable, unhindered. Finding and losing and searching for Bucky cloud his thoughts, but his yawning emotions have folded tightly around the idea of bringing him home, end of story. It's not the first time he has planned walking into hell for Bucky, and Steve finds resolve in his surety. He and Darcy, he thinks, are many miles from the decorum of her tidy office, the calculated carelessness of her hotel room. Steve recalls the sensation of her breath across his throat as she slept during their flight home; the blush that burned her cheeks when she woke up. “You could come with us,” he says. Steve is surprised by how much he means it.

“I could,” Darcy agrees. “I won’t.”

Steve waits.

“Just because SHIELD is gone doesn’t mean the Avengers disband. If anything, we’re going to need to create some kind of structure to keep the World Security Council from trying to lock you up.”

“They won’t manage that,” says Steve.

“Doesn’t mean they won’t damn well try,” Darcy quips.

Steve shifts forward on the couch, elbows on his knees, shoulders lined up square with Darcy. A silent moment stretches, feeding an old tension.

“What’re you looking at?” she asks quietly.

“Looking at you,” replies Steve.

Darcy leans into the touch of Steve's hand as he moves it from her shirt's ruined collar to cup the back of her neck. He pulls her slowly closer, cataloging the faded green bruises that ring around her throat, the pink edge where her split lip has only just healed. They breathe together for a moment, Darcy's eyes unreadable and her brows knit together. Then she puts her palms on Steve's thigh for balance and leans up to kiss him.

It is brief, hungry, startling. Steve's hand tightens in her hair and he bites his way into her mouth. Darcy retaliates for a moment, viciously so, and then she pulls away just as suddenly as she initiated. Steve resists for an instant though he stops kissing her, their open mouths breathing softly in tandem, their foreheads pressed together. Then Steve loosens his hand from her hair and gives her the space she pushed for. Her hands come away from his thigh; his snags once more in the collar of her shirt, peering to where the old wound bleeds out from under the bandage with renewed freedom. He gives her a flat, challenging look.

Sam clears his throat.

They don’t move any farther apart, and Sam throws the first aid kit on the table. “I’m gonna clean that up before we jet,” he says. “Sound good, Lewis?”

“Sounds good,” she says, undoing three further buttons on her shirt. Steve doesn’t look away and she doesn’t yield. Steve’s eyes follow her fingers and she feels the heat of his gaze on the exposed swell of her breast until she tugs the collar back from her shoulder. A resilient blush burns her cheeks, and Steve's gaze lifts, and then remains unwavering on her face. Sam fiddles behind her; the stink of iodine fills the air.

"It won't close because you've missed a piece of the bullet," Sam tells her.

"It was through-and-through," Darcy protests, angling her chin down and ripping away the bandage at the joint of breast and shoulder. Her stitches are irritated with the beginnings of infection. "Fuck."

Steve's face hardens with alarm. "Did you stitch it yourself?"

Darcy answers him with a silencing look.

"It musta been something with debris embedded," Sam says. He pokes a little more, and Darcy hisses through her teeth. "Steve," he says, "look in there. Razor, thread, needle, tweezers.  Antibiotic cream. Pain killers," he adds, "Lewis, are there any analgesic injector pens in this place?"

"No," she says. "There was only one left," she explains, gesturing to her side, "I used it a few days ago."

Steve snatches at the remaining buttons of her shirt, pushing the fabric aside to see a long, narrow bandage start around the back of her hip and follow the dip of her waist, all the way up to her middling ribs.

She glares at him; Steve feels his temper rise, taking a deep breath, and then another. "Don't," Darcy threatens. "It was shallow." She points to the lowest part of it, "I only needed half a dozen stitches to hold the bottom together. The rest was just a scratch." Sam pokes at her shoulder a little more, and Steve passes him a pair of gloves. Darcy breathes through her teeth in anticipation. "The guy was already half-dead."

Sam sits back. "Well," he starts.

"No," says Darcy. "I get it. And I appreciate it."

Steve has laid out the requisite materials on the coffee table, but he hasn't passed them over yet.

The silence is terrifically awkward.

"Okay," Darcy interrupts. "Which of you is going to give me a belt to bite on?"

"Darcy," Steve protests.

"Will you or won't you," she demands.

Steve sighs heavily, feeling his gut jerk with memories. "We," Steve says, "the Commandos. Dugan took a shot to the shoulder and Morita dug it out but I," he stops and looks at Darcy, steeling himself. "They needed me to hold him down."

"Okay," says Darcy.

"Floor," says Sam. And then he asks Darcy, "Did you dig anything out from the front, before you closed it up?"

Darcy shakes her head.

"Okay," Sam says. "I'm gonna grab some towels; wash my hands. You two," he stands, waving a hand carelessly at the space between them, "figure it out."

Steve nods as he walks out of the room, and then he looks at Darcy. She sheds her ruined shirt, folded up carefully to keep it from staining what it touches. Steve drops down to the floor, his back against the couch. His hands fall to his belt and he unthreads it quickly from his jeans and folds it over, putting it on the couch cushion behind his shoulder.

Darcy rises from the couch to stand in the vee of his legs. "My legs under yours?" she asks.

"Yeah," Steve agrees. He gestures loosely to the space in front of his chest. "You can wrap your arms around me, or leave them at your sides, whichever you want." He reaches out and takes one of her hands in his, looking at her fingers. "Hang on to my shirt," he says more gently. "Your nails will tear your palms up."

"Okay," she says. She wraps one arm around herself, shivering with nerves and the chill of bare skin.

"C'mere," says Steve, giving her hand a soft tug.

Darcy folds herself under and around his body, soaking up his latent heat. It is intimate and awkward and Darcy fists handfuls of his shirt to keep from shaking.

Sam's footsteps announce his return to the living room. He puts down a stack of clean towels, unfolding a particularly large one. "Lewis," he asks hesitantly, holding out the towel. She lifts her head from Steve's shoulder and he loosens his relaxed hold enough for her to turn around. "I don't know how messy this'll get, if you, uh,” he pauses awkwardly, “don't want to ruin your bra."

"Oh," says Darcy. "Yeah, okay, um, hold on."

Steve makes to let her go, go to another room, if she wants that kind of privacy, but she just takes the towel from Sam’s outstretched hand, wrapping it around her chest. Steve keeps his expression neutral, watching as she sweeps the straps down her arms and tugs the whole article down her body, her hands working out of sight. After a moment, she throws her bra up onto the couch, settling the towel tightly under both arms.

Steve grabs the belt, holding the loop of it steady for her. She fits it as far back along her teeth as she can and then buries her face in Steve's shoulder.

“Don’t try to tell ‘em I never gave you anything,” Steve jokes. Darcy snorts into his shoulder.

He tightens his thighs around her hips, his arms around and atop hers, and lowers his head so she can't jerk and bump Sam's hands.

"Can you breathe?" he asks.

Darcy nods, her face pressed tightly into his chest.

"All right," he says, pressing a quick kiss to her hair and then doubling down on his grip around her. "You just gotta keep breathing. You'll be just fine," Steve tells her.

-

“I wouldn’t book it to Leningrad just yet.” Darcy is stretched out on the couch, ice packs jammed under and over her shoulder for both pain and swelling. The towel has been replaced with a clean, smaller cousin, its bloody predecessor set aside to be burned with her shirt. While it covers her chest with excessive modesty, it's too short for her torso. Her clammy hands are folded over the exposed curve of her belly; chilled pink against milky white, both stark contrast to her black tactical leggings.

“No,” says Steve, eyes on her face.

“If I were an enhanced soldier who just regained consciousness in what was recognisably the future,” she says, watching Steve’s expression, aware of her poor irony, “and I knew that I’d been politically relevant to the place I was in, I would go to the library.”

Steve blinks.

“Or maybe a museum.”

“Shit,” says Sam.

“You know,” says Darcy, “depending on how important my vengeful vendetta was.”

-

Once Darcy is back on her feet later that afternoon, Sam and Steve throw their bags into another borrowed truck. Natasha has other hidey-holes chock-full of information, and they’re going to keep moving, see if they can’t find patterns either to where Hydra is retracting to or where the Winter Soldier will wander.

“That girl,” says Sam as Steve folds himself into the truck, “is a goddamn problem.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not talking about whatever kind of problem you’re making for yourself, because I know I wasn't supposed to see you macking on the couch,” Sam adds. “I’m talking about how she reads people like fucking books.”

“I know.”

“The fact that she gets along with Nat makes me nervous.”

“Good,” says Steve, as he maneuvers them through traffic. "It should."

“Dude,” says Sam, “we have business, and I know, I know how intense you are about Barnes, and I get it. But don’t get your head stuck in your ass over the past when the future is standing in front of you. Bleeding, I’d like to add. The future was _bleeding_ on you.”

“Sam,” Steve challenges.

“No,” Sam replies, cutting him off. “Don’t give me that. Ask her out when you get back,” he says sternly.

“I don’t think Darcy Lewis fondues,” Steve says, mostly to himself. She’s a little like Peggy, he thinks. She’s got no time for any kind of nonsense. He wonders momentarily about how she’ll react to Stark, and then decides that she and Pepper will string him up so tightly Stark’s blue mouth won’t even matter.

“What the fuck, man,” says Sam.

-

Darcy almost goes to her old apartment. She’s thinking about going inside the building while sitting at the cafe on the other end of the block, and it comes to her attention that the same grey sedan has circled the block six times while she’s been sipping her coffee. She ditches her hoodie, steals an unattended beanie and jacket, and takes four unnecessary bus lines back to the safehouse. She doesn’t think about the belongings inside her home, the letters and photographs, her personal iPod and the ugly seasonal sweaters she’s collected over the years. To newscasters and politicians alike, SHIELD has become new newest dirty word, public awareness going from zilch to massively negative over the course of a few scant hours. Darcy knows she wasn’t standing with the good guys when the curtains went up and every other fucking thing went down, and she doesn’t expect anything but interrogations and an indefinite stay in a holding cell if the military, the CIA, or the FBI catch her. Death by Hydra dawns as a kinder alternative.

Natasha taught her enough to survive, but it’s been a week and she feels guilty dipping any further into the cash at the safehouse. That night, she calls the number Steve gave her.

Two hours later, a homeless man knocks on the door.

-

“Are you gonna let me in or not,” Tony Stark asks the gun pressed against the arc reactor. “Because you come with a very long and threatening list of recommendations, but if you kill me before you’re hired then you’re kinda not hired,” he says.

“Come in,” Darcy grits.

They look at each other in the dim light of the hallway. Stark is wearing a scuffed ballcap, a stained and pilled hoodie, a greasy and sweaty muscle shirt. He’s even worked some dark makeup around his chin, making his beard appear much thicker and unkempt. His shoes are battered and the laces of the left one are in shreds, the ankle of it held closed with duct tape wrapped over the pants leg.

“A little birdie told me you need work,” he says. Then he holds his hand out flat, just above his head. “About yea high, boxer’s nose.”

“Clint,” Darcy sighs. She leads him into the kitchen and starts another pot of coffee.

“That’s the one,” he says. “Hill has already migrated over,” he continues, “and we’re making something work. Superhuman resources, what-the-fuck-ever. I privatised world peace with the suit, God knows what I can do with a god. A hulk. A…” he pauses, fingers waving. “A you. All your SHIELD teamies are with Stark Industries, so welcome to the club. Birds of a feather. I’ve had enough of this metaphor.” He frowns.

“I was never on team SHIELD,” Darcy says. “I was on team Jane, and then SHIELD took me in, and I got better, so then I was on team Jane-and-Natasha, and now everything’s gone to shit, and Steve and Sam and Nat are gone, and the Hawkeyes are gone, too, and I’m on my own, but I am definitely on team fuck-the-Nazis.” She breathes deeply and pours the coffee.

“Oh good,” says Stark, “I’m the biggest name in the business.”

“You’re the biggest name in any business,” she complains.

“And your point is?”

“Nevermind,” she says, pushing a cup of coffee into his hands.

“I don’t like,” he starts. Darcy doesn’t care what he doesn’t like and turns away. He takes the mug, its shattering demise prevented. “... to be handed things,” he finishes lamely. Then, to himself, “Yeah, you’ll fit in just fine.”

“Contract stuff,” Darcy says, sitting at the small kitchen table, “do you have it now?”

“Are you kidding?” Stark asks. “As in, are you actually joking? I need to test your situational responses: do I _look_ like I manage my own fucking company?”

“Shit,” says Darcy. “Also, you haven’t managed your company since 2008.”

Stark’s mouth closes with a clack of teeth.

“Well,” she says more seriously. “I need to figure something out, because leaving here is a one-way trip.” Stark stares at her and sips his coffee, grimacing.

“If anyone outside of the Avengers knew I was here, I would not be here,” she answers succinctly.

“Come live at the tower,” Stark replies.

“Do you…” Darcy starts, “do you just throw money at problems until they stop being problems?”

Stark makes a hem-haw face. “Until they stop being my problems,” he amends. “People don’t like being on the wrong side of the suit. Or Stark Industries. Or me.”

“Oh my God,” Darcy says, rubbing her hands over her face. “Please stop talking about yourself.”

“Uh,” he says, holding up a finger.

“Shut up,” Darcy growls.

“Anyway,” Stark says, twitching, “you’re hired, if that wasn’t clear. Come to the tower whenever, your job is waiting for you. Do you want a job?”

“Be quiet,” Darcy asks.

“Okay, hey, team PA. Rumour has it that the Soviets like you.”

“Out,” Darcy grits.

“Yeah,” Stark stands up, shoving his fists in his ratty pockets. She follows him to the door, gun drawn and held low. “What the hell,” says Stark. “You’re a baby. What are you doing with a gun. Where did it come from,” his tone escalates. “No. I’ll call your mother.”

“Stark.”

“Bruce has a box for you, too. Does the name 'Christopher' mean anything?”

Darcy sighs and she smiles at him for the first time since he knocked. “Yes,” she says. “Yes it does.” Then, one hand on the doorknob, she asks, “How did you get them?”

Stark smiles a little sardonically. “I threw money at the problem, Lewis. Jesus, keep up.” His tone is almost affectionate.

Watching Stark’s retreating back is the moment that Darcy learns that he trusts money more than he trusts people, that his heart in its little glass box beats and beats for a touch of softness in the midst of all that cool blue light. Exposure will kill anything, Darcy thinks, given enough time, and Natasha was not the first one to teach her that.

-

Darcy showers, packs, and restocks on the devices she’s taking with her. She takes the subway downtown, and then circles and circles endlessly to lose the two tails she’s spotted. They’ve gotten more insistent the further time moves along. Eventually, she makes it into the ground floor of the tower. She spies her reflection in the opulence and has to still her nervous heart against the memory of an explosion, the rush of blood over white cotton and all those seamless walls of glass.

A security guard plucks her neatly out of her own head. “Ms Lewis,” says a wall of a man. Darcy tilts her head back to look him in the face.

“Hi.”

“If you’ll follow me,” he says kindly, “Mr Stark asked that you be shown the Avengers’ elevator.” She follows him to another elevator distinguished from the whole bank of them by a few feet of space and subtly-embossed A’s on each door. He presses the call button, and then slips a card into Darcy’s hand. “Swipe for your floor in particular,” he explains, “or just speak aloud which residence or level you’d like to be taken to.”

“Huh,” says Darcy, looking at the plain black card with its golden-toned magnetic stripe. “Stark only has one setting, doesn’t he.”

“Ms Potts has been talking him down for decades,” the guard commiserates. “Have a good day,” he says, backing away.

“Thank you!” Darcy calls over her shoulder. She spots three stiff-looking suits at the entrance of the lobby, held up by a whole host of security. Darcy kicks herself for not noticing, and steps into the elevator as soon as it arrives. She swipes her card frantically, and then mumbles to herself, “Let’s go let’s go _let’s go_.”

“I assure you of your safety,” says a plummy, disembodied voice.

“What the fuck,” says Darcy.

“I am called Jarvis,” the voice continues. “I am an artificial intelligence designed by Mr Stark. I operate the building and function in every lab, hallway, and suite. I invite you to set personalised privacy programs in all your spaces, Ms Lewis.”

“Okay,” says Darcy, working on breathing.

“If you have anything further needs, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“Thanks,” Darcy says, trying to make it sound like a statement and not a question.

-

Jane shows up two weeks later. She doesn’t come up to Darcy’s apartment, but rather her office, where she’s ploughing through all the government notices, requests, sanctions, and invoices that have Steve Rogers’ name on them. He’s a menace to property.

“Hey,” says Jane from the doorway. “This is swanky.”

“Hi!” says Darcy. She stands from her desk and wraps Jane in an enthusiastic embrace.

“Whoa,” says Jane. “You okay?”

“People tried to kill me for a little while,” she says, “it’s nice to see a friendly face.”

With little warning, the hallway rattles with the familiar force of Thor’s approach. “I told him to wait a minute first,” Jane rushes, but she’s cut off when Thor marches in, preceded by monstrous bouquet.

“Happy birthday,” he says very seriously. “Are you not being well treated? Has Stark been negligent in your care?” He lays a heavy paw on Darcy’s shoulder. “Are you well?” He looks at her face very carefully.

“Hi,” she says, a little meek. “I’m totally okay, yeah.”

Thor’s intense frown does not relax, and Jane’s brow creases. “Darcy,” she says.

“No, no,” Darcy says, waving her hands. “That’s not what I mean at all. Everyone is very friendly,” she says, tone embarrassed, “I just don’t get to spend time with friends, you know?”

“Oh,” they say in unison.

“All of the government agencies are still pretty hot for me,” Darcy explains, “so I can’t really go kill time on the town.”

“Yeah, no,” Jane agrees.

“And right now Steve and Sam are off, the Hawkeyes are off. Natasha’s figuring herself out, and that’s totally her priority, like, go her.”

“No, yeah,” Jane agrees.

“What of Stark?” Thor asks.

“That’s…” Darcy looks for words. “That’s mostly professional. I mean, casual-professional, he works in sweatpants, you scientists,” she complains, “but like, he’s still my boss.”

“And Banner?” Thor asks.

“I haven’t met him yet,” Darcy says. “Though, I totally respect his need for distance.”

“But,” says Thor, “does he not care for your garden?”

“What,” says Darcy.

Thor moves away for a moment to set down the massive pot he’s carrying, though he doesn’t seem to strain with it. “In humorous harmony with his Berserkr self, the quieter Banner has what you call ‘green hands,’ that is, a gift of botanical insight.”

Darcy smacks her palm over her face, blowing a loud raspberry. “You’re totally on, big guy,” she tells him, “he’s a green thumb.” Darcy is going to swear at Natasha until she’s blue in the face when she finally gets back. And probably Steve, too.

“That’s the phrase,” he agrees. He sits in one of the chairs near her desk and breathes deeply, closing his eyes.

Jane shakes her head a little, clearing her thoughts. “Anyway,” she says, “happy birthday! I looked; chrysanthemums are toxic.”

Darcy smiles. “Thank you, Jane. That’s really thoughtful.”

Jane smiles pleasantly. “Did you know that both sunflowers and chrysanthemums have seed pods that grow outwards in perfectly doubled Fibonacci spirals? Like really perfect.”

Darcy feels a laugh bubble up from inside her chest. “I do now,” she says kindly. Darcy looks at her watch. “Can you stay?” she asks, “are you in town for a while?”

“We are moving house,” Thor pronounces carefully, eyes still closed. Then his expression clears, “For you, Darcy Lewis,” he says, “we have all the time in the world.”

-

Much later that afternoon, Stark shows up at her door, awkwardly holding a tall, narrow box level with his hip. “It’s your birthday,” he asks, his tone as awkward as his posture.

“It was a little while ago,” she explains. “But Jane arrived today. So I moved it.”

His suit swishes expensively as he walks. “Are you throwing my money at your problems?” he asks, putting down the box on her desk and flipping through the papers nearest his hands.

“Sometimes,” she says, noncommittally. She reaches for the box and he taps at her wrist. “Not til I’m gone,” he insists quietly, “you’ll embarrass my delicate sensibilities.” Before she can interrupt, he continues, “Why only ‘sometimes’? Lewis, don’t you dare be stingy, I have an image to maintain.”

“Sometimes I tell them to 'fuck off' outright.”

He gives her the most genuine smile she’s ever seen of his face. It crinkles around his eyes pleasantly. “That’s the stuff,” he says. “Tell Jarvis if you need anything, okay.” He turns to leave, and Darcy pulls the box towards herself.

“Pepper says you’re invited for birthday dinner at the penthouse tonight,” he calls over his shoulder, one foot already out the door. “Show up whenever.”

“What?”

“Don’t be late," he calls over his shoulder.

“What the hell,” Darcy exclaims, but Stark is already gone.

She opens the box and sees the expected greenery, and she handles it with care until she can get it in the open, careful not to let it touch her skin. She’s learned that itchy mistake from the windflower more than once.

Stark’s blocky engineer’s script is stuck on a thin wire. _Solanaceae, capsicum chinense + capsicum frutescens_. Darcy takes to Google.

“A ghost pepper,” she reads. “Stark, you considerate asshole.”

-

Dinner, by all rights, ought to have been a disaster.

But Thor was engaging, and Hill told the _best_ jokes, and Bruce recited stories about benign little adventures he’d had all over the world. Jane and Stark jabbered competitively at one another, unconcerned with how much or how little the rest of the table understood. Pepper and Lieutenant Colonel _-please-call-me-James_ both give her birthday cards, though Pepper’s has a note that says _look at the Prada catalogue and pick something nice for yourself_ with a little hand-drawn smiley face and Darcy has to keep her eyes from bugging at the table.

After dinner, they settle into the home theatre with three bottles of wine between them and Stark turns to Darcy. “Birthday girl picks,” he declares.

“Um,” says Darcy, looking at the expectant faces. “Hey, the Ocean's remakes won’t offend anyone, yeah?”

“Do you think this is funny, Darcy?” Hill unexpectedly recites, her eyes sparkling.

Darcy grins, unable to contain her surprise. “Well, Maria, it sure as shit ain’t sad.”

James and Pepper snort quiet laughs, and Thor leans down insistently to Jane’s ear, demanding to be let in on the joke.

-

Natasha comes back on a Friday.

“Thank God,” Darcy says, when she appears in the common lounge. “It’s good to see you,” she says more quietly. _In one piece_ and _alive_ dangle in the air like glass baubles, delicate truths better left unspoken.

“Yeah,” Natasha agrees. “It was… a strange few months.” She sits on the opposite end of the couch from Darcy. Darcy, without really thinking, opens her arms. Natasha’s lips curl in a very soft smile and for a moment, she leans into the embrace. When they separate, Darcy puts her head on Natasha’s shoulder.

“How do you feel about dumb action movies?” She pushes her tablet and paperwork further along the table with her toes.

“Favourable,” Natasha says. “Jarvis, queue something we’ll like.”

Less than twenty minutes into the film, Clint flings himself over the back of the couch and lands gracelessly over Darcy. “Hey,” she complains. He misses a beat before he looks at her.

“What?”

“Shove,” she says, poking him. They shift around a little until her feet are in his lap. Darcy catches Natasha looking intently at Clint and pointing to her own ear.

“Yeah, no,” he says.

“Jarvis,” Natasha says, “subtitles, please.”

Clint stretches one arm over the back of the couch and Natasha momentarily leans into the touch. Darcy tangles her fingers with those on his free hand, and if he’s surprised, it doesn’t show.

They watch three movies back to back to back, barely moving from their sprawling, interconnected spots. Darcy feels her breath come easily for the first time in months. She thinks of splinters in her skin and blood under her nails and glass in her knees. For all the scars she’s accumulated in her short time with these people, her worry unwinds itself from her spine and she sleeps, right there on the couch.

When she goes to her office the following morning, there is a Venus Flytrap in a small gray pot by her window. In Natasha’s handwriting, the small note says _You must be dangerous enough to survive._

-

“Hill?”

Darcy knocks  with one knuckle on Hill’s office door. She is now the director of operations for Stark Industries’ Superhuman Resources team. Darcy’s official position is deputy-director, though she thinks she’s more of a personality management specialist. Captain Rogers is still on his personal mission, so the team has been quiet; the Hawkeyes and Widow are in heavy rotation, Stark and Thor only going in when they need the heavy-hitters. Jane, who wrote the code for all of her own bridge computers, has been playing a mean hand in helping tear up Hydra from inside, but that she can do from the safety of the tower.

“Lewis.”

For all that they came to SHIELD through very different means, Darcy thinks that she and Hill make a solid team. Hill, however, was groomed at Fury’s elbow, and Darcy thinks she eats secrets for lunch. There’s a great deal of SHIELD’s old structure that Hill still works within, policies and conducts and protocols that Darcy was never taught and will now never learn, though she still finds herself rooting through files - inconspicuous details and names and locations, the meat of which is redacted so thoroughly the remaining information can’t even hope to make sense. Darcy, however, is a pattern person. She’s politics and patterns and people - it’s how her brain works. She steps into the office and closes the door, triggering the fogging mechanism that makes the space’s glass walls opaque.

“I don’t need to tell you that I know about Fury, but where is the Bus?” Darcy asks, keeping her face straight. “And why is Coulson on it?”

“Jarvis,” Hill says, “privacy protocol alpha zero zero two.”

The system goes down with a quiet chime. Darcy’s phone buzzes in her pocket; the AI telling her he’s still active - though limited - on her device.

“Please,” says Hill, in a way that doesn’t mean _please_ at all, “have a seat, Ms Lewis.”

-

Sam comes back two months later. When he shows up in the common area on a weeknight, unaccompanied, Darcy knows that everyone is thinking the worst.

“Whoa,” says Sam, holding up his palms to calm seven anxious faces. “They’re okay,” he soothes. “They’re coming in slow.”

“How slow,” asks Stark, though he won’t lift his head from his tablet, thumbing away.

“Coupla days,” says Sam, throwing his leather jacket over the back of the couch that Darcy’s sitting on. Before he sits, Darcy points.

“Kate Bishop, codenamed Hawkeye,” she says. Kate’s on the nearest couch to Sam, and he leans in, shaking her hand.

“Hi,” she says, swiping her hair out of her face and planting an elbow in Barton’s ribs to sit upright; he grunts.

“Hey there,” he replies. Then he points at Barton, “I thought…”

Barton answers easily. “We’re both Hawkeye.”

“Okay,” says Sam. He looks back to Darcy.

“And Thor, the Thunderer and innamorato of Dr Foster.” Jane, tucked into Thor’s side, waggles her fingers.

Sam holds out his hand and visibly readies himself for the shake, but Thor instead takes his wrist and Sam copies after a clumsy moment.

“Any man to take arms in the protection of Earth is my brother,” says Thor with simplicity.

Sam smiles winningly. “Then you’re in the right place.” He sits, and Natasha comes forward from the bar, perching on the arm of the couch where Banner sits casting shy, bemused glances at Stark.

“You found him?” she asks.

Sam’s good cheer dampens, his shoulders settling. “Yeah.”

“Will you tell us?” asks Thor. “I have been reading; it is a most wrenching tale of brothers in the annals of your nation’s warcraft, yet so far come to an unsatisfactory close.”

Sam rubs one palm over his chin. Stark, in a surprising display of intuition, appears at his shoulder, small tumbler in hand. Sam takes the drink gratefully; Stark sits and pretends he’s not listening.

“I don’t know how much I can tell you,” he says. “It’s not mine to share.”

Thor nods. “Perhaps right,” he says, “then tell us this: how may we best aid the captain and his companion upon their return?”

Sam sips and thinks before speaking. “Just give them time, I guess. Cap woke up clean and fast,” he says. “Barnes is… kinda muddy. He’s comin’ in slow,” he repeats.

‘Slow,’ as it turns out, is another eight months.

-

"How's that scar doing, Lewis?" Sam asks when they cross paths in the elevator on a dull morning. He's clearly coming back from a run; Lewis on her way to one of the gyms.

She tugs the strap of her top aside. It's an angry-looking white-pink knot of scar tissue, but it's small, not much larger than a postage stamp. She turns to demonstrate: "It's a little uglier in the back." And it is, larger than the front by half again, though not as raised. "Better for being taken care of when you did," she thanks him.

Sam smiles. "Glad to help."

Natasha, also in athletic gear, joins them on the next floor. She smiles and looks sneakily between the two of them. "Hey, Lewis," she says. "Not to bail, but why don't you take Wilson?"

"You're not too tired?" she asks him.

He grins a little and bounces on his toes. "Nah," he says, "sure. But I'll catch a quick shower and change first," he excuses, flapping at his sweaty shirt. Both women make disgruntled faces and he laughs. "Aw," he complains, "baby, don't be like that," he croons to Natasha.

"Watch it," she threatens him.

Lewis leans back against the elevator wall and laughs into her fist. "Okay," she says to Natasha. "But you have to stick around."

"Sure," Natasha agrees easily.

-

Darcy decks Wilson for the third time, evening the score once more through sheer determination, some quick footwork, and what must be a secret understanding of physics gifted to her by Doc Foster. Sam blinks sweat from his eyes and grunts at the ceiling. "She fights dirty," he groans.

"I don't," Darcy argues, holding out a hand to help him to his feet.

"She doesn't," Natasha agrees. "She fights to finish."

Darcy nods and Wilson tilts his head, obviously weighing what's been said. "Man," he says, wiping the back of his hand over his forehead, "it sure makes you and Cap a matched set."

Darcy tugs her braid and doesn't say anything.

Natasha pipes up once more. "Rogers inspires that kind of loyalty," she dismisses, leaning on the ropes of the ring. "Look at you," she says. "Look at me."

Wilson shrugs easily, but Darcy casts a dark look at Natasha. "I'm not waiting for him."

"Of course not," says Natasha. "That's the difference between dependency and loyalty."

-

“Cap.” Hill’s voice is sharp over the phone, and he feels his shoulders hunch. He’s been fending off the anxiety and guilt of having left the team indefinitely, but Sam’s in his place - and his uniform - and Thor’s back in town. That's enough to let him sleep at night.

“Maria.”

Bucky has an affinity for reading Italian newspapers; every embedded language proves a different and difficult set of obstacles, but Italian seems to hold the least violent of memories. Steve folds the edge of the paper over and over on itself, waiting for Maria to speak.

“I don’t want to rush you, but,” she says.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Borrowed time.” He hangs up the phone after a few more terse words and Bucky looks up from the other side of the room. He has taken to mastering card tricks and sleights-of-hand with his prosthetic. When Steve asked about it weeks ago, Bucky had told him that he didn't know how to do normal things with it. Steve doesn't ask any more. He watches Bucky for a moment, absently using the meat of his palm to smooth down his beard.

"Buck," he says, pushing his phone into his pocket. "What d'ya think?"

Bucky arches the deck back and forth between his fingers for the duration of a few breaths and then folds it away with a clean, tidy-sounding snap. "Your team needs you back," he says.

"Not if you need me first."

"Well," says Bucky, "I don't think I'm liable to off anybody any more."

Steve swallows a sigh, not rising to the fight. "You know that's not why we're taking all this time, Bucky," he says, "there's no normal either of us could possibly go back to. 1943 is gone. We have to figure out a new normal."

"And you want normal to be with those people," Bucky insists.

"There's pockets of Hydra operations left," Steve says, "and they've done all they can... so far. But."

"I don't know if I remember anything that's helpful to you."

"Bucky!" Steve's temper rises and his breath comes too fast, fanning the fire. "I don't want you back just to turn into a talking head. I want you back because you're my friend. I want you to meet my friends. You're one of the best fighters I've ever known-" at this Bucky's expression clouds predictably, "-and I wanted you on my team before that Swiss rat-bastard got his fucking hands in your head."

They look at one another in equal measures of tight exasperation.

"Besides," says Steve, intent on releasing the tension, "you're as pasty as the goddamn wallpaper."

Bucky stands. "like you've ever had a sun tan in your whole damned life," he grouses, "how are we gettin' out of here?"

"I'll figure something," says Steve dismissively, twiddling his phone in his hands again.

-

The helicopter descends to the roof of Avengers Tower, and Bucky peers out over the railings of its struts, catching a last glimpse of the bustling November city.

"You ready," calls Steve, leaning to swing open the door, shouting over the roar of the rotors.

"What are we waiting for?" Bucky shouts back.

-

Steve knocks on her apartment door in the tower, gently turning the bouquet of daisies over and over in his hands.

Darcy opens the door in a hurry. Her hair falls in thin curling wisps from the tail it's pulled into; her coffee mug steams in her grip.

"Hi," he says. "They're just daisies," Steve apologises, smoothing the pad of his thumb across his brows and then patting his beard before sticking his wandering hand in his pants pocket. "They're not dangerous."

Darcy's returning smile starts small, growing in the following quiet as they stare at one another. She reaches her free hand out towards him and Steve extends the bouquet, but she brushes past the flowers and takes his wrist loosely in her hand instead. She takes a step back, tugging him gently with her through the open door. Steve follows.

"They're perfect," she tells him. "They're just perfect."

**  
**

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, I lied, there's no such thing as a Carpenter's Cactus, but it was a really convenient joke. By the way, there's probably going to be a porny coda. There was almost porn in the hotel room.
> 
> Oops, I've lied again; I'm really not sorry.


End file.
